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THOMAS JEFFERSON'S VIEWS 



ON 



PUBLIC EDUCATION 



JOHN C. HENDERSON 



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NEW YORK AND LONDON 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

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1890 



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COPYRIGHT BY 

JOHN C. HENDERSON 
1890 



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Electrotyped and Printed by 
G. P. Putnam's Sons 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

PAGE 

An Admonition to Friends of Civil Liberty . . i 



II. 
A State should have a Universitv • • • 37 

in. 
Jefferson's Ideal University ..... 131 

IV. 
*' Our Colored Brethren" 213 

V. 
A Jeffersonian Amendment to the Constitution 

of the United States ..... 312 



PREFACE. 



On one of the dark days of 1778, when the people 
of the United State? were engaged in a portentous 
struggle with the British Crown, Thomas Jefferson arose 
in the Assembly of Virginia, and presented to his col- 
leagues a carefully framed bill, designed to establish in 
Virginia public schools, and academies or colleges, and a 
university. ' He was a man of fair complexion. His hair 
was of a brownish cast. He stood about six feet two and 
a half inches in height. He might have been taken for 
a highly cultured Scotchman. Indeed not less than 
three of his instructors had been Scotchmen. /In the 
year 1776 he had draughted the Declaration of American 
Independence, and had pledged his life, his fortune, and 
his honor to the maintenance of the principles which it 
contained. But as he stood before the Assembly, he 
realized that, however -great might be the sacrifices made 
by the people of a republic to secure to their posterity the ; 
blessing of civil liberty, they must ultimately fail in doingi 
so, unless they made suitable provision for the public' 
education of their youth. The importance of a good 
public-school system to a republic he laid before his 
colleagues with an earnestness that spoke eloquently of 
his devotion to the interests of civil liberty. Years after- 
wards, when he was the American Minister to France, 
alluding to his educational bill in a letter to Washington, 
he wrote, under date of Januar}^ 4th, 1786: " I never saw ' 



Vi PREFACE. 

one received with more enthusiasm than that was, in the 
year 1778, by the House of Delegates, who ordered it 
printed. And it seemed afterwards, that nothing but the 
extreme distress of our resources prevented its being car- 
ried into execution, even during the war." 

Jefferson during his long life filled many public posi- 
tions. He was a member of the Legislature, and, during 
a critical period in the history of Virginia, the governor 
of his State. Before the Declaration of Independence, 
and again at a later period, he was a member of the Con- 
tinental Congress. He lived at a time when the principles 
of government were studied to a very remarkable extent 
in America and in France. For a number of years, dur- 
ing the momentous period which ushered in the great 
French Revolution which ultimately convulsed the na- 
tions of Europe, he was the American Minister to France. 
For about four years he was Secretary of State, during 
the formative period of the government of the United 
States when Washington was President. For four years 
Jefferson was the Vice-President, and for eight years the 
President, of the United States. It is found by letters of 
Jefferson's, which were written to correspondents in dif- 
ferent parts of the world, that his belief in the importance 
of public schools to republics was not a mere inspiration 
of a moment, but that during a long life he was animated 
with the same earnest, consistent, and noble desire to 
serve the cause of civil liberty in all parts of the world by 
helping in the great work of securing to youth the intelli- 
gence which he believed was the only safe basis for 
republican institutions. 

I have been greatly aided, in writing this book, by 
facilities for study which I have enjoyed in the Astor 
Library, of New York. Often have I felt deeply grateful 
to the Astor family as I have thought of the magnificent 



PREFACE. Vll 

treasure-house of books that they have thrown open to 
the public. Although I have, while collecting material 
for this book, been shown kindly courtesy in the library 
of the British Museum, and have visited I hardly know 
how many collections of books in State Capitols and 
in universities, I have, I think, seldom if ever visited a 
better managed library than is the one founded by the 
Astors. To its superintendent, Mr. Robbins Little, 
I take pleasure in expressing in this public manner my 
appreciation of the facilities of research which I have en- 
joyed within its walls. To the librarian, Mr. Frederick 
Saunders, who has given to the world a number of books 
— among which is the beautiful volume entitled " Evenings 
with the Sacred Poets," — I desire to express my gratitude 
for kindly favors. Indeed,, to every one of the gentlemen 
connected with that library I feel indebted for kindly 
courtesy. 

In respect to the source from whence I have obtained 
the letters quoted in this volume, I will say that, as a 
rule, almost every one of them can be seen in one or the 
other of the following volumes : 

" Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, from the 
Papers of Thomas Jefferson," edited by his grandson, 
T. J. Randolph, in the year 1829. "The Writings of 
Thomas Jefferson," " Published by the Order of the Joint 
Committee of Congress on the Library, from the Original 
Manuscripts Deposited in the Department of State," in 
Washington, D. C, in the year 1854. "The Early His- 
tory of the University of Virginia, as Contained in the 
Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, Hith- 
erto Unpublished ; with an Appendix, Consisting of Mr. 
Jefferson's Bill for a Complete System of Education, and 
Other Illustrative Documents ..." Published in 
Richmond, Virginia, in the year 1856, by J. W. Randolph. 



viii PREFA CE. 

Although Jefferson held some views in respect to the 
education of youth which are scarcely, if at all, mentioned 
in this volume, — such as the importance of young people 
being taught anatomy or physiology, and such as the 
kind of instruction which American young women should 
receive, — and although comparatively little is said of his 
earnest wish to see the United States government found 
a great university in the city of Washington, — such as 
Washington and Madison may be said to have advised, in 
a peculiarly impressive manner, their country to estab- 
lish, — and in short, although this volume does not claim 
to do full justice to Jefferson's patriotic labors in behalf 
of public education, yet it gives an idea of how one of the 
most distinguished of American statesmen regarded the 
value of public, unsectarian schools to the people of the 
United States. It also gives an idea of what, in the best, 
and in the truest, sense of the term, " Jeffersonian princi- 
ples " demand that American statesmanship shall do in 
respect to duly cherishing the interests of learning in all 
parts of the Republic of the United States. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON'S VIEWS 

ON 

PUBLIC EDUCATION. 



AN ADMONITION TO FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 

It is, one may well believe, not too much to say that 
every land has had at times well-meaning friends of civil 
liberty. In lands afflicted with a despotic form of gov- 
ernment there have sometimes arisen men who by the 
heroism with which they have made sacrifices to secure to 
their fellow-citizens a well-ordered form of self-government 
have given eloquent proof of the sincerity of their patriot- 
ism. Their wish to emancipate the land of their birth 
and of their love from the bondage of a heartless despot- 
ism has been most noble — has been indeed worthy of the 
highest praise ; — but, sadly often, after having taken part 
in revolutions in which rivers of blood have flowed and 
in which uncounted treasure has been expended, they 
have not only failed to secure the priceless blessing of 
self-government, but they have with anguish seen even 
their efforts to secure to their country a well-ordered re- 
publican form of government result in bringing upon their 
countrymen a more terrible form of despotism than that 
from which they had sought deliverance even at the awful 
cost of revolution. These patriots, from Jefferson's point 
i. I 



2 AN ADMONITION TO 

of view, as will presently be seen, have sadly often made 
a fatal mistake in the way which they have adopted to 
secure the inestimably valuable blessing for which they 
have longed. They have failed to realize the intimate con- 
nection that must ever exist between civil liberty and at 
least a certain degree of intellectual culture. It may well 
be interesting to a thoughtful student of the science of 
government to notice the convictions of such a statesman 
as was Thomas Jefferson respecting the possibility of illit- 
erate nations enjoying the blessing of self-government, 
and of the way in which friends of civil liberty — especially 
the way in which the government of a Republic — should 
look upon public schools. 

Among Jefferson's correspondents was the learned and 
very celebrated Baron Alexander von Humboldt, whose 
brother Karl Wilhelm Humboldt was the first Minister of 
Public Instruction of Prussia after the disastrous battle of 
Jena — a battle which one might have supposed would 
prove the utter ruin of Germany. Karl Humboldt was 
called by Frederick William III. to help in regenerating 
almost ruined Prussia by establishing a good school sys- 
tem. The system which he adopted is still to a large 
extent in use in Germany. There is reason to infer that 
he adopted his educational system in part from ideas 
.which he received from Jefferson. Jefferson in a book 
which he published, entitled " Notes on Virginia," dwelt 
upon an educational bill which he had himself presented 
in the Legislature of Virginia in the year 1778. This 
book was published in France. Karl Wilhelm Humboldt 
who resided in Paris probably there met with the book. 
Jefferson, as will presently be seen, presented a copy of 
the work to Karl Humboldt's celebrated brother who at 
one time was himself requested by the king of Prussia to 
act as Minister of Public Instruction. Baron Alexander 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 3 

von Humboldt was Jefferson's guest for three weeks whea 
he visited the United States. 

It may readily be supposed that Jefferson's views re- 
specting public education would be highly interesting to 
the Humboldts. Whoever will read the conclusions of 
Jefferson on public education as expressed in his " Notes 
on Virginia," and compare the public-school system which 
he suggested in his justly celebrated " Bill for the Better 
Diffusion of Knowledge," and will compare them with the 
educational system which one of the Humboldts especially 
helped to give to Prussia, may well feel that American 
statesmanship has exerted a vastly weightier influence on 
Germany's history than is generally known. 

Two days after retiring from the Presidency of the 
United States, Jefferson wrote a letter to Alexander von 
Humboldt, — a part of which reads thus : " You have wisely 
located yourself in the focus of the science of Europe. I 
am held by the cords of love to my family and country, 
or I should certainly join you. Within a few days I shall 
now bury myself in the groves of Monticello, and become 
a mere spectator of the passing events. On politics I 
will say nothing, because I would not implicate you by 
addressing to you the republican ideas of America, deemed 
horrible heresies in Europe." 

In another letter to Baron Humboldt, under date of 
April 14th, 181 1, Jefferson wrote: "The interruption of 
our intercourse with France for some time past, has pre- 
vented my writing to you. A conveyance now occurs by 
Mr. Barlow or Mr. Worden, both of them going in a 
public capacity. It is the first safe opportunity offered of 
acknowledging your favor of September 23rd, and the 
receipt at different times of the Ilird part of your valua- 
ble work 2d, 3rd, and 5th, livraisons and the IVth part of 
2d, 3d, and 4th, livraisons, with the Tableaux de la 



4 AN ADMONITION TO 

Nature, and an interesting map of New Spain. For 
these magnificent and much esteemed favors, accept my 
sincere thanks. They give us a knowledge of that country 
more accurate than I beHeve we possess of Europe, the 
seat of a science of a thousand years. It comes out, too, 
at a moment when those countries are beginning to be 
, interesting to the whole world. They are now becoming 
I the scenes of political revolution, to take their stations as 
I integral members of the great family of nations. All are 
j now in insurrection. In several the Independents are 
I already triumphant, and they will "undoubtedly be so in 
' all. What kind of government will they establish ? Are 
their chiefs sufificiently enlightened to form a well guarded 
government, and their people to watch their chiefs? 
Have they mind enough to place their domesticated In- 
dians on a footing with the whites ? All these questions 
you can answer better than any other. I imagine they 
j will copy our outlines of confederation and elective gov- 
j ernment, abolish distinction of ranks, bow the neck to 
{ their priests, and persevere in intolerantism. * * * But 
I unless instruction can be spread among them more rapidly 
I than experience promises, despotism may come upon 
1 them before they are qualified to save the ground they 
\will have gained. Could Napoleon obtain, at the close of 
the present war, the independence of all the West India 
Islands, and their establishment in a separate confederacy, 
our quarter of the globe would exhibit an enrapturing 
prospect into futurity. You will live to see much of this. 
I shall follow, however, cheerfully my fellow laborers, 
. contented with having borne a part in beginning this 
beatific reformation. * * * In sending you a copy of my 
I ' Notes on Virginia,' I do but obey the desire you have 
j expressed. They must appear ch^tif enough to the 
■ author of the great work on South America. But from 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 5 

the widow her mite was welcome, and you will add this 
indulgence — the acceptance of my sincere assurances of 
constant friendship and respect." 

It was natural that Jefferson should observe with inter- 
est the efforts of the people of South America to free 
themselves from the withering sway of the monarchs of 
Spain. One may well doubt whether in the history of the 
world a people can be named who have suffered at the 
hands of despots as terribly as had South America from 
the government of Spain. James Monroe, some time 
before announcing what is known as the Monroe doctrine, 
sent a secret Commission of Inquiry to South America to 
report to the United States Government the condition and 
political prospects of the Spanish Provinces. Whoever will 
look over the State papers presented to the United States 
government by this important Commission will see that 
the accounts which they give of cruelty and of tyranny on 
the part of the Crown of Spain are indeed dreadful. It-«is 
surprising how little is generally known by citizens of the 
United States, of the history of the war of Independence 
in South America — a war in which it has been estimated 
that a million of lives were lost. * It would not perhaps 
be too much to say that in Jefferson's day the population 
south of the United States was four or five times as large 
as was the population in the English-speaking division of 
America. Henry Clay, on March 24th, 1818, delivered in 
Congress a speech in which he urged that the United 
States should, in addition to what it had already done, 
recognize the independence of a Spanish State and send 
to it a Minister. The speech was very eloquent and 
forcible. It is said to have " burst on Spain herself, and 

* See account of the struggle for liberty of the Spanish American States in 
Encyclopedia Britannica, also Memoirs of Gen. Miller in the Service of Peru, 
by John Miller (London, 1829). 



6 AN ADMONITION TO 

on all Europe, as a clap of thunder from the skies." In 
his speech Clay sketched the vastness and natural gran- 
deur of the immense territory known as South America, 
and reviewed the history of the persecution which the 
people for three hundred years had been made to suffer at 
the hands of Spain : — how they had had to submit to a 
debasing course of education, — how useful books had been 
kept from them ; — and then he characterized the awfulness 
of the atrocities of the Spanish forces in South America 
in a deeply impressive manner. This celebrated speech 
was borne to South America and the governments of the 
Spanish States voted thanks to Henry Clay. Songs were 
sung in his honor and monuments were erected to his 
memory. The South American General Bolivar, who has 
often been called "The Washington " — " The Liberator" 
— of South America commanded the speech of Henry 
Clay to be read to his army. 

Let a. single instance here sufifice to give an idea of the 
horrors which too often characterized the war for inde- 
pendence in South America. At the capture of the city 
of Guanaxuato, the Spanish ofificer, Don Felix Maria Gal- 
leja is said to have ordered the prisoners who had been 
taken in battle, — as well as the defenceless citizens of 
the town, — men, women and children — to be driven into 
the great square, and several thousand of them — it has 
even been said that the number was fourteen thousand — 
were butchered by having their throats cut. Such a wo- 
fully tragic scene is one not to be dwelt upon, nor are the 
dreadful retaliatory measures adopted by Bolivar a sub- 
ject which it is fit to here present in all its horrid details. 
The Spanish ofificer defended his course, — which however 
he is said in oflEicial communications to the Spanish Crown 
to have exulted over, — on the ground that he could not 
afford to spare powder and bullets in putting to death 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. / 

the enemies of his CathoHc Majesty.* Should it here be 
stated that a high Roman Catholic ecclesiastic once 
estimated, that under the Spanish rule in South America, 
fifteen millions of the wretched people, who had been 
reduced to slavery, owing to the hardships incidental to 
the cruel bondage to which they were subjected, miser- 
ably perished, some idea might be formed of the horrors 
of the tyranny under which they had long groaned. A 
well written history of South America would be particu- 
larly interesting to the American citizen. A Motley has 
given some faint idea of the acts of the Spanish Monarchy 
and of the Inquisition in Holland, but where has there 
arisen a writer of equal gracefulness of style, and of 
equal research, to give an account of the same awfully 
instructive history in South America? However wretch- 
edly poor were the people of South America, yet for a 
long period, whenever any of them collected a little 
money they were tempted to part with it for indulgences, 
— or " Bulls" as they were called by the ignorant people. 
Thus their scanty means were made to flow toward Rome 
where an Italian Pontiff lived in regal splendor. The 
student of history is apt to be more and more surprised 
as he finds how immense was the number of these " Bulls" 
which were sent to South America. It was natural that 
such an intelligent lover of civil liberty as was Jefferson, 
should view with interest the struggle which was taking 
place in South America. 

On December 6th, 1813, writing to Humboldt, Jeffer- 
son said: "The livraison of your astronomical observa- 
tions, and the 6th and 7th on the subject of New Spain, 

* See " Memoirs of the Mexican Revolution : Including a Narrative of 
the Expedition of General Xavier Mina," etc., etc. By William Davis 
Robinson — a citizen of the United States who was himself in South 
America during a part of the war. 



8 AN ADMONITION TO 

with the corresponding atlasses, are duly received, as had 
been the preceding cahiers. For these treasures of a 
learning, so interesting to us, accept my sincere thanks. 
I think it most fortunate that your travels in those coun- 
tries were so timed as to make them known to the world 
in the moment they were about to become actors on its 
stage. That they will throw off their European depen- 
dence I have no doubt ; but in what kind of government 
their revolution will end I am not so certain. History, I 
believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people 
maintaining a free civil government. This marks the 
lowest grade of ignorance, of which their civil as well as 
religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own 
purposes. The vicinity of New Spain to the United 
States, and their consequent intercourse, may furnish 
schools for the higher, and example for the lower classes 
of their citizens. And Mexico, where we learn from you 
that men of science are not wanting, may revolutionize 
itself under better aus^pices than the Southern provinces. 
These last, I fear, must end in military despotisms. The 
different casts of their inhabitants, their mutual hatred 
and jealousies, their profound ignorance and bigotry, will 
be played off by cunning leaders, and each made the 
instrument of enslaving the others." 

To Humboldt, on the 13th of June, 1817, Jefferson 
again wrote, and alluded to Spanish American affairs. 
" The physical information you have given us," he said, 
" of a country hitherto so shamefully unknown, has come 
exactly in time to guide our understandings in the great 
political revolution now bringing it into prominence on 
the stage of the world. The issue of its struggles, as 
they respect Spain, is no longer matter of doubt. As 
it respects their own liberty, peace and happiness, we 
cannot be quite so certain. Whether the blinds of big- 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 9 

otry, the shackles of the priesthood, and the fascinating 
glare of rank and wealth, give fair play to the common 
sense of the mass of their people, so far as to qualify 
them for self-government, is what we do not know. Per-j 
haps our wishes may be stronger than our hopes. The 
first principle of republicanism is, that the lex viajoris 
partis is the fundamental law of every society of indi- 
viduals of equal rights ; to consider the will of the society 
announced by the majority of a single vote, as sacred as 
if unanimous, is the first of all lessons of importance, 
yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once 
disregarded no other remains but that of force, which 
ends necessarily in military despotism. This has been the 
history of the French revolution, and I wish the under- 
standing of our Southern brethren may be suflficiently 
enlarged and firm to see that their fate depends on its 
sacred observance. 

" In our America we are turning to public improvements. 
Schools, roads, and canals are everywhere either in opera- 
tion or contemplation. * * * We consider the employ- 
ment of the contributions which our citizens can spare, 
after feeding and clothing, and lodging themselves com- 
fortably, as more useful, more moral, and even more 
splendid, than that preferred by Europe, of destroying 
human life, labor and happiness." 

To Monsieur Dupont de Nemours, Jefferson on April 
15th, 181 1, wrote saying, 

"Another great field of political experiment is opening 
in our neighborhood, in Spanish America. I fear the 
degrading ignorance into which their priests and kings 
have sunk them, ha's disqualified them from the mainte- 
nance or even knowledge of their rights, and that much 
blood may be shed for little improvement in their condi- 
tion. Should their new rulers honestly lay their shoul- 



lO AN ADMONITION TO 

ders to remove the great obstacles of ignorance, and 
press the remedies of education and information, they 
will still be in jeopardy until another generation comes 
into place, and what may happen in the interval cannot 
be predicted, nor shall you or I live to see it." 

One of Jefferson's most intimate friends was General 
Kosciuszko, In a brief sketch of the life of this distin- 
guished Polish friend of America, Jefferson wrote : " The 
workings of his mind on the subject of civil liberty were 
early and vigorous ; before he was twenty, the vassalage 
of his serfs filled him with abhorrence, and the first act 
of his manhood was to break their fetters." As Jefferson 
hated slavery and longed to see it abolished in the 
United States, Kosciuszko's abhorrence of slavery en- 
deared him all the more to him. Sympathizing with the 
Americans in their struggle with the British Govern- 
ment, he obtained in Paris a letter from Benjamin Frank- 
lin to Washington. Not long after his arrival in the 
United States, being an accomplished ofificer, he was made 
an engineer with the rank of Colonel in the American 
army. He planned works on a range of hills called 
Bemis Heights, in the State of New York. These works 
Burgoyne's army twice unsuccessfully attacked before 
surrendering to the Americans. Kosciuszko also planned 
Fort Putnam at West Point — a fort whose interesting 
ruins are still sometimes visited by the excursionist or 
thoughtful traveller. After rendering other services to the 
United States, and receiving the thanks of Congress, he 
returned to Poland. In Poland he was made a Major- 
General. It is not necessary here to dwell upon the 
causes of the wars which preceded the final partition of 
Poland. To do so it would be necessary to dwell upon 
the sad religious history of Poland, upon the evils exist- 
ing in a nation made up of nobles and serfs ; upon the 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. II 

degradation to which an illiterate people sink, and to the 
dangers to which a people are exposed whose very in- 
competency for self-government invites foreign inter- 
ference in their political affairs. Kosciuszko naturally 
wished to see the Poles as free as were Americans. 
Whether he took the best method to accomplish his wish 
need not here be discussed. As a general he became 
greatly distinguished. On a memorable day in the his- 
tory of Poland he was wounded and fell bleeding to the 
earth. Soon afterwards occurred the final partition of 
Poland. A few years after this last event Kosciuszko, 
still suffering from his wounds, visited the United States, 
and received many honors. In Europe he also was 
treated with high respect. In a conversation with the 
Emperor of Russia he besought him to give to Poland a 
constitution, and to establish schools for the education of 
the peasants. Jefferson in a letter to Mr. Jullien, dated 
July 23rd, 1818, spoke of Kosciuszko as "The brave 
auxiliary of my country in its struggle for liberty, and," 
Jefferson continued, " from the year 1797, when our par- 
ticular acquaintance began, my most intimate and much 
beloved friend. On his departure from the United States 
in 1798, he left in my hands an instrument, appropriating 
after his death, all the property he had in our public funds, 
the price of his military services here, to the education 
and emancipation of as many of the children of bondage 
in this country, as it would be adequate to." This trust 
imposed upon him by his Polish friend Jefferson accepted. 
Kosciuszko greatly admired Jefferson and sometimes 
called him his " Dear Aristides." When Kosciuszko died 
the women of Poland went into mourning. The Senate 
of Poland caused a tomb to be erected which is still a 
grand monument. In the rotunda of the great Capitol at 
Washington is a bust of this distinguished friend of liberty. 



12 AN ADMONITION TO 

To Kosciuszko, on April 13th, 181 1, Jefferson in a letter 
said, " Peace then has been our principle, peace is our in- 
terest, and peace has saved to the world this only plant of 
free and rational government now existing in it. If it 
can still be preserved, we shall soon see the final extinc- 
tion of our national debt, and liberation of our revenues 
for the defence and improvement of our country. * * * 
Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public 
debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, &c., 
the farmer will see his government supported, his children 
educated, and the face of his country made a paradise. 
* * * And behold ! another example of man rising in 
his might and bursting the chains of his oppressors, and 
in the same hemisphere, Spanish America is all in revolt. 
The insurgents are triumphant in many of the States, and 
will be so in all. But there the danger is that the cruel 
arts of their oppressors have enchained their minds, have 
kept them in the ignorance of children, and as incapable 
of self-government as children. If the obstacles of bigotry 
and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that 
common sense will suffice to do everything else. God 
send them a safe deliverance." 

To John Adams on May 17th, 18 18, Jefferson wrote : " I 
enter into all your doubts as to the event of the revolu- 
tion of South America. They will succeed against Spain. 
But the dangerous enemy is within their own breasts. 
Ignorance and superstition will chain their minds and 
bodies under religious and military despotism. I do 
believe it would be better for them to obtain freedom 
by degrees only ; because that would by degrees bring on 
light and information, and qualify them to take charge of 
themselves understandingly ; with more certainty, if in 
the meantime under so much control as may keep them 
at peace with one another." 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 1 3 

When Jefferson was in France he sent a long letter, 
dated May 4th, 1787, to John Jay. In this letter he 
alluded to a conversation which he had had with a Mexi- 
can, who wished to interest him in a proposed revolution 
in Mexico. He wrote : " I was still more cautious with 
him than with the Brazilian, mentioning it as my private 
opinion (unauthorized to say a word on the subject other- 
wise) that a successful revolution was still in the distance 
with them ; that I feared they must begin by enlightening 
and emancipating the minds of their people." 

Jefferson's highly judicious advice to his Spanish breth- 
ren to begin their revolution by " emancipating and 
enlightening the minds of their people " * was worthy of 
a great statesman. Who can imagine what happy results 
would to-day be enjoyed in Cuba and in all South Amer- 
ica, and in Spain itself, if all friends of civil liberty had 
exerted themselves to establish schools and libraries, and 
had cherished the interests of learning ; — and had been 
friends of religious liberty, without which true civil liberty 
cannot exist. When Jefferson gave from the fulness of 
his heart the advice to his Spanish friends to " begin " the 
great revolution in which they were called to engage, " by 
enlightening and emancipating the minds of their people," 
the Inquisition was doing a sad work in Spanish America. 
It held sessions in Mexico, Lima and Carthagena, and 
anathematized many books. No books, not even periodi- 
cals, not printed in the Spanish language, were permitted 
to go into circulation until examined by the commissioners 
of the Inquisition — an institution whose history is so aw- 
ful that one may well shudder as he lifts for an instant the 
veil under which its bigotry — its innumerable cruelties 

* I was once pleased to learn from my bookseller that a book entitled 
" Our National System of Education," which I had published in 1877, had 
been bought by some one to send to Cuba. 



14 AN ADMONITION TO 

and murders — is permitted in great measure to rest. 
Monsieur Dupont, in his work entitled " Voyage dans 
TAmerique," * draws attention to the fact that to sell 
a forbidden book was punished as a crime. For the first 
offence a bookseller was banished from the place in which 
his business had been carried on, and was fined one hun- 
dred ducats, and he was forbidden to sell or deal in books 
of any kind for two years. Should he repeat his " crime," 
— so-called, — he received a heavier punishment. As the 
fines were deposited in the coffers of the Inquisition there 
was a strong temptation on the part of the so-called 
" Holy Office " to find in books which they examined, 
heresy, immodesty, or disrespect to the government. If 
a person received a catalogue of books from abroad, he 
had to send it to the " Holy Office," which was not bound 
to restore it. Any man's house could be visited by the 
commissioners of the Inquisition, to search for prohibited 
books. Although in some lands even the poor man can 
feel that " his house is his castle," yet over an immense 
area in America commissioners of the so-called " Holy 
Office " could enter any house at any hour of the day or 
night, and search in every nook and corner to see whether 
there was a book which the wretched people had been 
forbidden to read. Monsieur Dupont points out that 
monks and the Romish clergy were allowed to read some 
of the books condemned by the " Holy Office," but not 
all. In 1790 the number of books which the people were 
forbidden to read, and which were placed upon the 
Spanish Index expiirgatoriiis, numbered at least five thou- 
sand four hundred and twenty. The works of at least 

* See Mr. Charles Lindsay's interesting work entitled " Rome in Canada. 
The Ultramontane Struggle for Supremacy over the Civil Authority." 
Sold by Lovell Brothers, Toronto, 1877, Mr. Lindsey quotes from Mr. 
Dupont's Travels. 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 1 5 

that number of authors were on the forbidden Hst. If a 
person was merely punished by the public laws of the 
land — however cruel and tyrannical they were, — he yet 
escaped much if he was saved from being dragged to the 
dungeons of the Inquisition ! 

To a Mr. Coray, who wished to promote the cause 
of liberty in which the people of Greece were, under very 
interesting circumstances, engaged, Jefferson wrote a long 
letter of advice, under date of Oct. 3 1 st, 1823. Alluding to 
what his correspondent had written respecting the people 
of Greece, he wrote : " You have certainly begun at the 
right end towards preparing them for the great object 
for which they are now contending, by improving their 
minds and qualifying them for self-government. For this 
they will owe you lasting honors. Nothing is more likely 
to forward this object than a study of the fine models of 
science left by their ancestors, to whom we also are all 
indebted for the lights which originally led ourselves out 
of Gothic darkness." 

Among Jefferson's correspondents was Lafayette. 
There was much about Lafayette to make Jefferson love 
him. Believing that titles of nobility made improper 
distinctions among men who were created equal, this 
devoted friend of liberty relinquished the proud title of 
Marquis. When a young man, although possessed of a 
splendid fortune, he turned away from the luxurious 
courts of Europe to give his best efforts to the cause of 
liberty. Great was the sensation produced in Europe 
when it was known that Lafayette, a member of one of 
the most illustrious families of France, had enlisted in 
the cause of freedom. Congress made him a Major- 
General, dating his commission from July ist, 1777. He 
served on the staff of Washington, who " loved him as if 
he were his own son." He was at times given important 



1 6 AN ADMONITION TO 

commands. It is not necessary to here dwell upon 
Lafayette's great services in the War of Independence and 
of the honors which he received from the American 
nation. Suffice it to say that when John Adams and 
Franklin were arranging terms of peace with Great 
Britain, Lafayette with twenty-four thousand troops and 
sixty vessels of the line, was at Cadiz, ready to sail for 
America, if peace should not be concluded. Partly 
through the influence of Lafayette, France gave to the 
American cause — if the estimate of Calonne, the French 
minister of finance is to be believed, — about twelve 
hundred millions of francs. It is but just to say, how- 
ever, that Jefferson, in his Autobiography, declared that 
Calonne admitted that the United States ought not to be 
debited with more than forty-five millions of francs. 

When a great man is spoken of, it is sometimes interest- 
ing to pause for a moment to contemplate his character. 
From Lafayette's correspondence, some opinion can be 
formed of his character. On Feb. 22d, 1786, writing to 
John Adams he said: "In the cause of my brethren, I 
feel myself warmly interested, and most decidedly side, 
so far as respects them, against the white part of mankind. 
Whatever be the complexion of the enslaved, it does not, 
in my opinion, alter the complexion of the crime which 
the enslaver commits ; a crime much blacker than any 
African face. It is to me a matter of great anxiety and 
concern to find that this trade is sometimes perpetrated 
under the flag of liberty, our dear and noble stripes, to 
which virtue and glory have been constant standard 
bearers."* On the loth of May, 1786, Washington, who 
himself wished the abolition of slavery, wrote from Mount 
Vernon a letter to Lafayette, in which he said : " The 
benevolence of your heart, my dear Marquis, is so con- 

* " Works of John Adams," vol. viii., p. 376. 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 1 7 

spicuous upon all occasions, that I never wonder at any- 
fresh proofs of it ; but your late purchase of an estate in 
the colony of Cayenne, with a view of emancipating the 
slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of your 
humanity. Would to God a like spirit might diffuse 
itself generally into the minds of the people of this 
country,"* 

When JefTerson left France he left Lafayette struggling 
in behalf of civil liberty. The friends of the cause of 
liberty in France met with such success that Washington 
in a letter to Madam Graham, dated Jan. 9th, 1790, said : 
"The renovation of the French constitution is indeed one 
of the most wonderful events in the history of mankind, 
and the agency of the Marquis de Lafayette in a high 
degree honorable to his character. My greatest fear has 
been, that the nation would not be sufBciently cool and 
moderate in making arrangements for the security of that 
liberty, of which it seems to be fully possessed." 

To Washington, Lafayette wrote a letter under date of 
March 7th, 1791, in which he thus spoke: "Whatever 
expectations I had conceived of a speedy termination of 
our revolutionary troubles, I still am tossed about in the 
ocean of factions and commotions of every kind ; for it is 
my fate to be attacked on each side with equal animosity ; 
on the one by the aristocratic, slavish parliamentary, 
clerical, in a word, by all the enemies to my free and lev- 
elling doctrine, and on the other by the Orleans factions, 
anti-royal, licentious, and pillaging parties of every kind ; 
so that my personal escape from amidst so many hostile 
bands, is rather dubious, although our great and good 
revolution is, thank Heaven, not only insured in France, 
but on the point of visiting other parts of the world, pro- 
vided the restriction of public order is soon obtained in 

* "Works of Washington," by Sparks, vol. x., p. 177. 



1 8 AN ADMONITION TO 

this country, where the good people have been better 
taught how to overthrow despotism, than they can under- 
stand how to submit to laws." On March 15th, 1792, La- 
fayette wrote to Washington thus : " The danger for us 
lies in our state of anarchy, owing to the ignorance of the 
people, the number of non-proprietors, the jealousy of every 
governing measure, all which inconveniences are worked 
up by designing men, or aristocrats in disguise, but both 
extremely tend to defeat our ideas of public order. * * * 
The Assembly is wild, uninformed, and too fond of pop- 
ular applause. * * * The farmer finds his cares allevi- 
ated and will feel the more happy under our constitution, 
as the Assembly is going to give up its patronage of one 
set of priests. * * * Licentiousness, under the mask of 
patriotism, is our greatest evil, as it threatens property, 
tranquillity, and liberty itself." * 

The madness of the French at the period of which La- 
fayette wrote, the manner in which they overthrew their 
Constitution and beheaded Louis XVL and Marie Antoi- 
nette — whose lives Lafayette had once saved ; the ease 
with which a Robespierre and a Napoleon ruled them ; 
the terrible scenes which were enacted in Paris ; the wars 
in which France engaged — wars in which Jefferson esti- 
mated that from eight to ten millions of lives were lost — 
need not here be dwelt upon. When the men known as 
Jacobins came into power Lafayette was obliged to give 
up his command in the army and to flee from France. 
While passing through Austria he was arrested and treated 
with cruelty worthy of a despotism. He was cast into a 
dungeon. In this dark Austrian place of confinement he 
was kept it is said nearly three years. The cell of the 
illustrious French patriot was three paces broad and five 
and a half long. Deprived of even a pen and ink he 

* Sparks' " Life of Washington," vol. x., p. 502. 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. I9 

managed one day to mix some soot and water and with a 
toothpick to secretly write on a piece of paper which 
providentially came into his possession to a Princess who 
sympathized with him, the words: " I know not what dis- 
position has been made of my plantation at Cayenne, but 
I hope that Madame Lafayette will take care that the 
negroes who cultivate it shall preserve their liberty." 
Pale and weak — a deeply suffering prisoner though he 
was — deprived of the air of heaven, his great soul did not 
wish the poor slaves which he had set free at his own ex- 
pense, to be re-enslaved. A part of the time his wife, who 
was worthy to be the wife of a hero, shared his imprison- 
ment. She was a woman who added lustre to his name. 
She was however but a tender woman and could not bear 
the suffering through which she was called to pass. Her 
devotion to her husband ultimately affected her health 
and cost her her life. Her mother, her grandmother, and 
her sister were executed by a ferocious populace on the 
gallows. She herself would have been executed had it 
not been for the death of Robespierre — a monster of 
iniquity, who had been educated by Jesuits as had an 
astonishingly large number of the men to whom France 
owed some of the worst features of this dreadful period 
in her history. Strange it was that the French at this 
time should have been so destitute of wisdom as to let a 
few leaders rivet upon them new chains of bondage, when 
in the United States three of the Presidents of the Amer- 
ican Congress during the war for Independence were 
descended from the Huguenots, as was the distinguished 
Alexander Hamilton. Washington after having tried to 
effect Lafayette's liberation through American ministers 
at foreign Courts and by a special mission to Berlin finally 
wrote, not as the President of the United States but as 
George Washington — a man — to the Emperor of Germany, 



20 AN ADMONITION TO 

to whose jurisdiction Lafayette had been removed, a noble 
letter. Whether this letter received the courtesy of a 
reply, or whether it was instrumental in causing Germany, 
when she finally surrendered Lafayette at the command 
of Napoleon, to deliver him to an American Representa- 
tive may not now be known. To Lafayette's son Wash- 
ington opened his own home. 

After his imprisonment Lafayette again became one of 
the most distinguished friends of liberty in France, and 
continued to exert himself in behalf of civil and religious 
freedom. Napoleon in vain tried to tempt him to side 
with him in the interests of despotism. Louis XVIIL, 
who had secret designs respecting America and against 
the cause of liberty in Europe not generally known, 
ordered his Solicitor General to accuse Lafayette, who at 
the time was a member of the House of Deputies of 
France, of treason. The accusation was formally made. 
Lafayette rising demanded a public inquiry in the Parlia- 
ment of France before the nation. He proposed that his 
accusers should lay before the nation their charges and 
that he should submit to France without reserve what he 
had to say of the charges and that he should single out 
his adversaries no matter what their rank." The Bourbon 
king quailed before the challenge and the accusation was 
dropped, but the Bourbon king succeeded in preventing 
Lafayette from being for a time re-elected to the French 
Parliament. Lafayette in the mean time visited the 
United States and received such an ovation as no man 
had ever before received. Congress insisted upon his 
receiving as a small return for the money which he had 
once expended himself on the people of the United 
States, two hundred thousand dollars, in addition to ten 
thousand dollars which it had sent him when in prison, 
and in addition to a whole county of land. At a formal 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 21 

reception given by Congress to this illustrious Frenchman, 
Henry Clay in the course of his address of welcome said : 
" The vain wish has been sometimes indulged, that Provi- 
dence would allow the Patriot, after death to return to his 
country, and to contemplate the intermediate changes 
which had taken place — to view the forests felled, the 
cities built, the mountains levelled, the canals cut, the 
highways constructed, the progress of the arts, the 
advancement of learning, and the increase of population. 
General, your present visit to the United States is the 
realization of the consoling object of that wish." The 
distinguished orator, as he proceeded assured the guest of 
the Republic that in one respect he would find the people 
of America unaltered and that was in their affectionate 
and ardent gratitude to Lafayette and in their devotion to 
liberty. Lafayette in his feeling reply spoke of how the 
United States reflected " on every part of the world the 
light of a far superior civilization. 

Lafayette after travelling three thousand miles in the 
United States returned to France, where he continued to 
exert himself in behalf of religious liberty, and in behalf 
of other great reforms. He became the acknowledged 
leader of the great revolution of 1830, and the Com- 
mander-in-chief of the National Guards. He placed Louis 
Philippe on the throne " a monarchy surrounded by re- 
publican institutions." He died full of honors and full of 
years and was buried beside the loving wife of his youth. 

On Feb. 14th, 1815, Jefferson writing to Lafayette said : 
" A full measure of liberty is not now perhaps to be 
expected by your nation, nor am I confident they are 
prepared to preserve it. More than a generation will be 
requisite, under the administration of reasonable laws 
favoring the progress of knowledge in, the general mass 
of^ the people, and their habituation to an independent 



22 AN ADMONITION TO 

security of person and property, before they will be capa- 
ble of estimating the value of freedom, and the necessity 
of a sacred adherence to the principles on which it rests 
for preservation. Instead of that liberty which takes root 
and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere 
force or accident, it becomes, with an unprepared people, 
a tyranny still, of the many, the few, or the one. Possi- 
bly you may remember, at the date of the jeu de paume, 
how earnestly I urged yourself and the patriots of my 
acquaintance, to enter then into a compact with the King, 
securing freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial 
by jury, habeas corpus, and a national Legislature, all of 
which it was known he would then yield, to go home, and 
let these work on the amelioration of the condition of the 
people, until they should have rendered them capable of 
more, when occasions would not fail to arise for com- 
municating to them more. This was as much as I then 
thought them able to bear, soberly and usefully for 
themselves. You thought otherwise, and that the dose 
might still be larger. And I found you were right ; for 
subsequent events proved they were equal to the constitu- 
tion of 1791. Unfortunately, some of the most honest 
and enlightened of our patriotic friends, (but closet politi- 
cians merely, unpracticed in the knowledge of man,) 
thought more could still be obtained and borne. They 
did not weigh the hazards of a transition from one form 
of government to another, the value of what they had 
already rescued from those hazards, and might hold in 
security if they pleased, nor the imprudence of giving up 
the certainty of such a degree of liberty, under a limited 
monarch, for the uncertainty of a little more under the 
form of a republic. You differed from them. You were 
for stopping there, and for securing the constitution which 
the National Assembly had obtained. Here, too, you 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 23 

were right ; and from this fatal error of the republicans, 
from their separation from yourself and the constitution- 
alists in their councils, flowed all the subsequent suffer- 
ings and crimes of the French nation." 

Again writing to Lafayette on May 14th, 181 7, Jeffer- 
son said: "But although our speculations might be in- 
trusive, our prayers cannot but be acceptable, and mine 
are sincerely offered for the well-being of France. What 
government she can bear, depends not on the state of 
science, however exalted, in a select band of enlightened 
men, but on the condition of the general mind. That, I 
am sure, is advanced and will advance ; and the last 
change of government was fortunate, inasmuch as the 
new will be less obstructive to the effects of that advance- 
ment. * * -5^ I wish I could give better hopes of our 
Southern brethren. The achievement of their indepen- 
dence of Spain is no longer a question. But it is a very 
serious one, what will then become of them? Ignorance 
and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self- 
government. They will fall under military despotism, 
and become the murderous tools of the ambition of their 
respective Bonapartes ; and whether this will be for their 
greater happiness, the rule of one only has taught you to 
judge. No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see them 
and all mankind exercising self-government, and capable 
of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish 
but what is practicable ? As their sincere friend and 
brother, then, I do believe the best thing for them, would 
be for themselves to come to an accord with Spain, under 
guarantee of France, Russia and the United States, allow- 
ing to Spain a nominal supremacy, with authority only to 
keep the peace among them, leaving them otherwise all 
the powers of self-government, until their experience in 
them, their emancipation from their priests, and advance- 



24 AN ADMONITION TO 

ment in information, shall prepare them for complete 
independence." 

John Adams and Jefferson had not always thought 
alike regarding the ultimate success of the French Revolu- 
tion. On July 13th, 1813, Adams thus wrote to Jefferson : 
" The first time that you and I differed in opinion on any 
material question was after your arrival from Europe ; 
and that point was the French Revolution. 

"You were well persuaded in your own mind that the 
nation would succeed in establishing a free republican 
government. I was as well persuaded in mine, that a 
project of such a government, over five-and-twenty millions 
of people, when four-and-twenty millions and five hundred 
thousand of them could neither read nor write, was as 
unnatural, irrational, and impracticable as it would be 
over the elephants, lions, tigers, panthers, wolves, and 
bears^ in the royal menagerie at Versailles. Napoleon 
has lately invented a word which perfectly expresses my 
opinion at that time and ever since. He calls the project 
Ideology ; and John Randolph, though he was, fourteen 
years ago, as wild an enthusiast for equality and fraternity 
as any of them, appears to be now a regenerated proselyte 
to Napoleon's opinion and mine, that it was all mad- 
ness." 

The venerable John Adams again wrote to Jefferson on 
Aug. 15th, 1823, and again alluding to France, said : " Not 
long after the denouement of the tragedy of Louis XVI., 
when I was Vice-President, my friend, the Doctor,* came 
to breakfast with me alone. He was very sociable, very 
learned and eloquent on the subject of the French Rev- 
olution. It was opening a new era in the world, and 
presenting a near view of the millennium. I listened, I 
heard with great attention, and perfect sangfroid. At 

* Franklin. 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 25 

last I asked the Doctor : ' Do you really believe the 
French will establish a free, democratic government in 
France?' He answered, ' I do firmly believe it.' 'Will 
you give me leave to ask you upon what grounds you 
entertain this opinion ? Is it from any thing you ever read 
in history? Is there any instance of a Roman Catholic 
monarchy of five-and-twenty millions of people, at once 
converted into intelligent, free, and rational people?' 
' No, I know of no instance like it.' ' Is there any thing 
in your knowledge of human nature, derived from books 
or experience, that any empire, ancient or modern, con- 
sisting of such multitudes of ignorant people, ever were, 
or ever can be, suddenly converted into materials capable 
of conducting a free government, especially a democratic 
republic ? ' ' No, I know of nothing of the kind.' ' Well, 
then. Sir, wlrat is the ground of your opinion ? ' " Adams 
then, continuing his letter, gives a reference to Scripture, 
which Dr. Franklin significantly made, and a method 
which the philosopher suggested, to prevent a people's 
being troubled by kings. Doctor Franklin, however, him- 
self suggested some reasons for doubting the success of 
the Revolution. 

To this last letter Jefferson replied on Sept. 4th, 1823. 
" Your letter of August 1 5th," he wrote, " was received in 
due time with the welcome of everything which comes 
from you. With its opinions on the difificulties of revolu- 
tions from despotism to freedom, I very much concur. 
The generation which commences a revolution rarely 
completes it. Habituated from their infancy to passive 
submission of body and mind to their kings and priests, 
they are not qualified when called on to think and provide 
for themselves ; and their inexperience, their ignorance 
and bigotry make them instruments often, in the hands of 
Bonapartes and Iturbides, to defeat their own rights and 



26 AN ADMONITION TO 

purposes. This is the present situation of Europe and 
Spanish America. But it is not desperate. The light 
which has been shed on mankind by the art of printing, 
has eminently changed the condition of the world. As 
yet, that light has dawned on the middling classes only of 
the men of Europe. The kings and the rabble, of equal 
ignorance, have not yet received its rays ; but it continues 
to spread, and while printing is preserved, it can no more 
recede than the sun return on his course. A first attempt 
to recover the right of self-government may fail, so may 
a second, a third, &c. But as a younger and more in- 
structed race comes on, the sentiment becomes more and 
more intuitive, and a fourth, a fifth, or some subsequent 
one of the ever renewed attempts will ultimately succeed. 
In France, the first effort was defeated by Robespierre, the 
second by Bonaparte, the third by Louis XVIIL and his 
holy allies: another is yet to come, and all Europe, 
Russia excepted, has caught the spirit ; and all will attain 
representative government, more or less perfect. * * * 
To attain all this, however, rivers of blood must yet flow, 
and years of desolation pass over ; yet the object is worth 
rivers of blood, and years of desolation. For what inherit- 
ance so valuable, can man leave to his posterity? " Jeffer- 
son then speaks of the hope that be had, that the people 
of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Prussia, Germany, and Greece, 
would be blessed with a measure of liberty. Continuing, 
he added : " You and I shall look down from another world 
on these glorious achievements to man, which will add to 
the joys even of heaven." 

In a letter which Jefferson, under date of April 15th, 
181 1, wrote to Monsieur Pagonel he said: "I received 
through Mr. Warden the copy of your valuable work on 
the French Revolution, for which I pray you to accept 
my thanks. That its sale should have been suppressed is 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 2/ 

no matter of wonder with me. The friend of hberty is 
too feehngly manifested, not to give umbrage to its ene- 
mies. We read in it, and weep over, the fatal errors 
which have lost to nations the present hope of liberty, 
and to reason the fairest prospect of its final triumph over 
all imposture, civil and religious. The testimony of one 
who himself was an actor in the scenes he notes, and who 
knew the true mean between rational liberty and the fren- 
zies of demagogy, is a tribute to truth of inestimable 
value. The perusal of this work has given me new views 
of the causes of failure in a revolution of which I was a 
witness in its early part, and then augured well of it. I 
had no means afterwards, of observing its progress but the 
public papers, and their information came through chan- 
nels too hostile to claim confidence. An acquaintance 
with many of the principal characters, and with their fate, 
furnished me grounds for conjectures, some of which you 
have confirmed, and some corrected. Shall we ever see 
as free and faithful a tableau of subsequent acts of this 
deplorable tragedy ? Is reason to be forever amused 
with the hocJiets of physical sciences, in which she is 
indulged merely to divert her from solid speculations 
on the rights of man, and wrongs of his oppressors ? It is 
impossible. The day of deliverance will come, although 
I shall not live to see it. The art of printing secures us 
against the retrogradation of reason, and information. 
The examples of its safe and wholesome guidance in 
government, which will be exhibited through the wide- 
spread regions of the American continent, will obliterate 
in time, the impressions left by the abortive experiments 
of France. With my prayers for the hastening of that 
auspicious day, and for the due effect of the lessons of 
your work to those who ought to profit by them, accept 
the assurance of my great esteem and respect." 



28 AN ADMONITION TO 

As might be supposed the condition of the people of 
Spain did not altogether escape Jefferson's notice. In 
that beautiful but benighted country but a very small 
proportion of the population could read and write. The 
Roman Catholic Church and the State were united. Only 
one who has studied the results in such a country as 
Spain can know what such a union means. While the 
people were miserably poor the wealth of the hierarchy 
was almost beyond computation. Wherever the eyes of 
a traveller turned they would be apt to see oppression and 
degradation. 

Writing to Lafayette on Nov. 4th, 1823, Jefferson said: 
"Alliances, Holy or Hellish, may be formed, and retard 
the epoch of deliverance, may swell the rivers of blood 
which are yet to flow, but their own will close the scene, 
and leave to mankind the right of self-government. I 
trust that Spain will prove, that a nation cannot be con- 
quered which determines not to be so, and that her suc- 
cess will be the turning of the tide of liberty, no more 
to be arrested by human efforts. Whether the state of 
society in Europe can bear a republican government, I 
doubted, you know, when with you, and I do now. * * * 
But the only security of all, is a free press. The force 
of public opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted 
freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must 
be submitted to. It is necessary to keep the waters- 
pure." 

On Dec. 14th, 1813, Jefferson wrote a letter to Don 
Valentine de Torunda Corunna, in which alluding to the 
condition of Spain he said, " Give equal habits of energy 
to the bodies, and science to the minds of her citizens, 
and where could her superior be found ? " 

On April 28th, 18 14, Jefferson wrote an encouraging 
letter to his friend Le Chevalier de Onis, the Spanish 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY, 29 

Minister, in which he dwelt upon the Constitution which 
had been adopted by the Spanish patriots. After ex- 
pressing a regret at the union of Church and State, for 
which it provided and an aristocratic feature of the in- 
strument which an American ought not to approve, he 
continued : " But there is one provision which will im- 
mortalize its inventors. It is that which, after a certain 
epoch, disfranchises every citizen who cannot read and 
write. This is new, and is the fruitful germ of the improve- 
ment of everything good, and the correction of everything 
imperfect in the present constitution. This will give you 
an enlightened people, and an energetic public opinion 
which will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit of 
the government. On the whole I hail your country as 
now likely to resume and surpass its ancient splendor 
among nations." 

Jefferson's hopes for Spain's well-being were disap- 
pointed. One of the first acts of Ferdinand VII. when 
the so-called Holy Alliance again put upon his head a 
crown was to decree, on May 4th, 1814, that the Cortez 
should be abolished and that its acts should be considered 
null and void, and that the Spanish Constitution should 
be publicly burned. 

Among Jefferson's correspondents as has been seen 
was the learned diplomatist and brilliant writer on ques- 
tions of political economy and agriculture — Monsieur 
Dupont de Nemours. In 1772 this distinguished French- 
man, who had received various titles and decorations from 
foreign princes, was invited to Poland by King Stanislas 
Augustus, and made secretary of the council of public 
education and governor of the king's nephew — Prince 
Adam Czatoryski. Dupont, two years later, was recalled 
to France by Turgot, the Comptroller General who 
wished his learned countryman's assistance in the man- 



30 AN ADMONITION TO 

agement of the finances of France. It is said that most 
of the principles upon which the French Treasury is con- 
ducted to this day were derived from the measures which 
Dupont attempted to carry out. He it was who nego- 
tiated with the EngHsh envoy, Dr. James Hutton, the 
treaty of 1782, which recognized the independence of the 
United States. In 1786 he also negotiated a highly 
important commercial treaty. For these services the 
French Government conferred upon him high distinctions. 
He took a very interesting part in the French Revolu- 
tion. In 1789 he was a member from Nemours to the 
States General and later he was a member of the Con- 
stituent Assembly. Twice he was elected President of 
that body. He, however, being opposed to the extreme 
revolutionists came near being executed — his life being 
saved by the downfall of Robespierre. As an illustra- 
tion of the sad condition of affairs in the Assembly it 
may here be stated that when the learned Dupont arose 
to. show the evil of a proposed measure respecting the 
finances of France, he was mobbed on leaving the Cham- 
ber and his life was with difficulty saved. Although he 
declined honors offered him by Napoleon he was instru- 
mental in bringing about the treaty of 1803 by which the 
vast territory of Louisiana was purchased by the United 
States. He wrote various papers on highly important 
scientific subjects for learned societies. In 18 14 this distin- 
guished man was Secretary of the provisional government 
of France and at the restoration he became Chancellor of 
the State. 

About the time that Jefferson was President of the 
United States, Monsieur Dupont visited America. At 
Jefferson's especial request Dupont wrote and published 
a plan of national education for the United States. In 
the preface to his work he states that he had prepared 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 3 1 

and published the work at the instance of, or to use his 
polite French expression, at the command of, Thomas 
Jefferson and in the closing lines of his volume he again 
alludes to Jefferson in a very complimentary manner and 
states that he had requested him to write the volume. 
This book is said to have exerted an important influence 
in France where its recommendations were partially 
adopted. Dupont enlarged with eloquence upon some 
of the principles which Jefferson had himself brought 
forward in the Assembly of Virginia in 1779. Dupont 
wished the President of the United States to add to his 
Cabinet a Secretary of Education, and had other plans 
which would be interesting to dwell upon. Some of the 
work which he probably would have had a Cabinet officer 
perform is, at the present day, accomplished by the 
admirable Bureau of Education in Washington, which 
was founded largely by efforts of General Garfield. 
Jefferson himself had a cherished plan for what may be 
called national education — a plan which it is proposed to 
unfold in another division of this volume — apian which is 
designed to secure public education to all parts of even a 
continental republic. 

In a letter to Dupont de Nemours, under date of 
April 24th, 1 8 16, Jefferson wrote: "In the constitution 
of Spain, as proposed by the late Cortez, there was a 
principle entirely new to me, and not noticed in yours, 
that no person born after that day, should ever acquire 
the rights of citizenship until he could read and write. It 
is impossible sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this 
provision. Of all those which have been thought of for 
securing fidelity in the administration of the government, I 
constant reliance to the principles of the constitution, 
and progressive amendments with the progressive ad- 
vances of the human mind, or changes in human affairs, 



32 AN ADMONITION TO 

it is the most effectual. Enlighten the people generally, 
and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will 
vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. Although I 
do not, with some enthusiasts, believe that the human 
condition will ever advance to such a state of perfection 
as that there shall no longer be pain or vice in the world, 
yet I believe it susceptible of much improvement, and 
most of all, in matters of government and religion ; and 
that the diffusion of "knowledge among the people is to be 
the instrument by which it is to be effected. The con- 
stitution of the Cortez had defects enough ; but when I 
saw in it this amendatory provision, I was satisfied 
all would come right in time, under its salutary oper- 
ation. No people have more need of a similar provision 
than those for whom you have felt so much interest. No 
mojtal wishes them more success than I do. But if 
what I have heard of the ignorance and bigotry of the 
mass be true, I doubt their capacity to understand and 
to support a free government ; and fear that their emanci- 
pation from the foreign tyranny of Spain, will result in a 
military despotism at home. Palacios may be great; 
others may be great; but it is the multitude which pos- 
sesses force ; and wisdom must yield to that." 

This letter of Jefferson's, there is reason to suspect, 
exerted an important influence in France. Dupont was 
accustomed in Paris to meet a circle of pleasant and dis- 
tinguished statesmen and Academicians — among whom 
was the learned Guizot, who, although a Protestant was 
at a later period made Minister of Public Instruction in 
France, and was able to accomplish more in establishing 
schools in his native land than had perhaps any French- 
man before his time. This learned circle used to meet 
on Wednesdays at the home of the aged Madame 
d'Houdetot who received them at dinner. One might 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 33 

almost fancy that Jefferson's letter was talked about at 
such a gathering. Guizot wrote a history of education in 
France. He also wrote a life of Jefferson in which he 
speaks in high terms of his devotion in the work of build- 
ing up a school system in Virginia. Guizot before his 
death exerted his influence to induce France to adopt 
what are known as obligatory school laws. In March, 
1852, the venerable Guizot, who had held peculiarly 
high stations in France, writing to his eldest daughter, 
said : " I shall certainly, if I live, allow myself the satis- 
faction of leaving a record, not only of what I did, but 
what I thought and proposed to do during the four years 
that I was Minister of Public Education. It is one of the 
passages of my life to which I attach the most importance, 
and I wish to leave a full and accurate account of it." 
Guizot must have been especially interested in the 
account which Dupont published in the year 1800 of the 
attention given to religious instruction outside of the 
schools of America. After paying a high compliment to 
the people of United States — indeed speaking of them too 
flatteringly — stating that there are not more than four 
people out of a thousand who cannot write legibly, and 
contrasting with their learning the astounding illiteracy of 
the people of Spain, of Portugal and of Italy and even of 
the people of Germany and France, and stating that in 
Poland not more than two men out of a hundred could 
write while in Russia not one out of one hundred could 
write, he remarks that the people of England, of 
Holland and of the Protestant cantons resemble the 
people of the United States because they read much in 
the Bible, and that parents consider it their duty to teach 
their children from its pages, and that youth are intel- 
lectually cultivated by sermons, by a liturgy in their 
own language, and by moral teachings and a worship 



34 AN ADMONITION TO 

derived from the Bible, and also that the minds of 
the people are even trained by argumentations of va- 
rious kinds. He states that in the United States a 
large proportion of the public read the Bible and the 
newspapers. Dupont gave an interesting description of 
family worship in the United States and of the opportu- 
nities which the people, and even the youth, enjoyed of 
becoming acquainted, through periodicals, with observa- 
tions on politics, philosophy ; — with the details of agricul- 
ture, and with the arts and with travels ; — with navigation, 
and with extracts from all the good books which appear 
in America and in Europe and with much other informa- 
tion. In a peculiarly happy French manner, however, 
Dupont intimated that nevertheless public instruction in 
the United States was not so good but that it could be, 
and ought to be, improved. He wished to see a Univer- 
sity established in which the studies would be higher and 
even more useful than those pursued in the college. He 
held that a University and colleges and common schools 
would be helpful to each other and would support each 
other. He spoke of the reward which Americans would 
reap who established a University, and of the reward 
which would be enjoyed by all who established colleges, 
and then added that all who founded good primary 
schools would receive the benediction of Heaven, the 
veneration of posterity, and would have the joy of a 
happy conscience. In the preface to his volume he 
speaks of the great service which Monsieur Cuvier had 
rendered France by publishing an account of the admi- 
rable primary schools which the people of Holland had 
established, and evidently wished to himself render his 
country a similar service by making known to them that 
America might soon be expected to have schools rivalling 
in excellence even the schools of Holland. He drew 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 35 

attention to the importance of these institutions of 
America, and stated that they were worthy of the pro- 
found consideration of all men animated by a wish to 
promote the welfare of their nation. 

What were Jefferson's views respecting the practica- 
bility of illiterate nations satisfactorily governing them- 
selves ? To state in a condensed form his conclusions, he 
believed as will be seen in a letter dated Jan, i6th, 1816, 
which will be more fully quoted in the next division of 
this volume, that, " If a nation expects to be ignorant and 
free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was 
and never will be." He believed, as has been seen in one 
of his letters to Lafayette, that, " Ignorance and bigotry, 
like other insanities, are incapable of self-government." 

Believing as Jefferson did, it was natural for him to 
write — as it has already been seen that he wrote from 
Paris, under date of Jan. 4th, 1786, to Washington, who 
himself proposed to found some schools, — as follows : " It 
is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe 
but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too, 
of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This 
it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general 
plan." In his book entitled *' Notes on Virginia " — which 
Baron Humboldt characterized as a " classical work," — 
after describing the school system which it was proposed 
to establish in Virginia, Jefferson states that, " Of the 
views of this law none is more legitimate, than that of 
rendering the people the safe, as they are the only legiti- 
mate guardians of their liberty." In a letter dated Nov. 
29th, 1 82 1, — as will be seen in due time — Jefferson drew 
attention to the innumerable blessings which nations 
reap from supporting in a worthy manner institutions 
of learning. He then said that " experience * ■s^ * 
teaches the awful lesson, that no nation is permitted to 



36 AN ADMONITION TO FRIENDS OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 

live in ignorance with impunity." * It may be proper 
to here again notice Jefferson's reasoning as contained in 
his bill " For the Better Diffusion of Knowledge," of 
1779. It may in part be condensed thus : For various 
very weighty reasons the " public happiness " demands 
that a people who wish to enjoy the blessings of good 
government should be possessed of a very considerable 
amount of knowledge. If they are not, then men who 
are at once wicked and ambitious will impose upon their 
credulity and step by step steal from them their rights. 
" But," Jefferson adds, " the indigence of the greater 
number disabling them from so educating, at their own 
expense, those of their children, whom nature hath fully 
formed and disposed to become useful instruments of the 
public, it is better that such should be sought for and 
educated at the common expense of all, than that the 
happiness of all should be confided to the weak and 
wicked." 

* " Early History of the University of Virginia," J. W. Randolph, Rich- 
mond, Va., 1856, p. 470. 



II. 

A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

It was a cherished conviction of Thomas Jefferson's 
that in a Commonwealth provision should be made for 
universities wisely suited to modern times, no less truly 
than for primary schools. As President of the United 
States he signed bills making large appropriations of land 
for the exclusive benefit of academies, seminaries and 
colleges. To Washington, who had in view the devoting 
of a quite large amount of money to the founding, or to 
the support of, institutions of learning, Jefferson wrote 
a letter on Feb. 23rd, 1795, in which he laid before him a 
plan for the transferring of a great European college to the 
national Capital. All the professors of the celebrated 
College of Geneva — an institution which after exerting a 
wide influence in Europe was temporarily suppressed 
during the French Revolution — wished to transplant the 
college to America. In this letter* Jefferson character- 
ized the College of Geneva as one of the eyes of Europe, 
the University of Edinburgh being the other. 

In the year 1783, Jefferson, although bowed with grief 
owing to the recent death of his wife, had with others 
endeavored to established a grammar school in Albemarle 
county, Virginia. A charter was obtained for this acad- 
emy, in the year 1803, but it can hardly be said to have 
been fairly founded until the year 18 14. In that year 

* "Washington's Works," vol. xi., p. 473. 
37 



38 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

friends of education held a meeting and Jefferson, who 
was present, was elected one of the trustees of "Albe- 
marle academy." At another meeting Jefferson was 
appointed a member of a committee to draught a petition 
to the Assembly of Virginia requesting that Virginia 
appropriate certain public lands in Albemarle county for 
the support of the institution. This he accordingly did, 
and also prayed the Legislature of Virginia to make 
a yearly appropriation of money for the support of this 
proposed seat of learning. He also requested that the 
institution should be allowed to call itself " Central 
College." The Assembly of Virginia granted only apart 
of the petition ; but, Central College came into life with a 
Board of Managers which included James Monroe, who 
was at the time President of the United States, Ex-, 
Presidents Jefferson and Madison, and Joseph C. Cabell 
who when Governor of Virginia — as Monroe when Gov- 
ernor before him had done — had encouraged the people 
to establish a good school system for the State. Jefferson 
and Madison and Monroe, although they could very ill 
afford to do so, gave each a thousand dollars to the infant 
institution. Six other gentlemen gave each a thousand 
dollars to the college and other friends gave smaller 
'' amounts. Towards the college thirty-five thousand 
dollars was subscribed and money was raised by other 
means than by subscription. 

In a communication to the Legislature of Virginia, 
dated Jan. 6th, 1818, — written by Jefferson and signed by 
Madison and Monroe and Cabell and by Jefferson and 
two other officers of Central College, — the college was 
offered as a gift to the State of Virginia, providing the 
State would convert the college into a university. In 
this communication Jefferson pointed out that to found a 
university would require " funds far beyond what can be 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 39 

expected from individual contributions : " — funds for 
which, he added, " the revenues at the command of the 
Legislature would alone be adequate." He then continued: 
" And we are happy to see, that among the cares for the 
general good, which their station and the confidence of 
their fellow-citizens have made incumbent on them, this 
great political and moral want has not been overlooked. 
By a bill of the last session, passed by one branch, and 
printed by the other for public consideration, a disposi- 
tion appears to go into a system of general education, of 
which a single University for the use of the whole State is 
to be a component part. A purpose so auspicious to the 
future destinies of our country, which would bring such a 
mass of mind into activity for its welfare, cannot be con- 
templated without kindling the warmest affection for the 
land of our birth, with an animating prospect into its future 
history. Well directed education improves the morals, 
enlarges the minds, enlightens the councils, instructs the 
industry, and advances the power, the prosperity, and the 
happiness of the nation. But it is not for us to suggest 
the high considerations, which their peculiar situation will 
naturally present to the minds of our law-givers, encour- 
aging a pursuit of such incalculable effect ; nor would it 
be within the limits of our dutiful respect to them to add 
reasonings or inducements to their better understanding 
of what will be wise and profitable to our country." * The 
suggestion of the aged Jefferson and of his distin- 
guished colleagues was adopted by the Legislature and 
thus was born " The University of Virginia." The Assem- 
bly did not act, however, before engaging in an earnest 
debate. It appointed Jefferson and Madison, and some 
other gentlemen, members of a Commission to report to 

* " Early History of the University of Virginia." J. W. Randolph, 
Richmond, Va., 1856, pp. 402-3. 



40 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

it a suitable location for the State University. Jefferson, 
as Chairman of the Commission, made a long and valua- 
ble report, in which he spoke of the benefits which a 
republic derives from establishing primary schools and 
institutions of different grades of learning. In this very 
able report he said : " The Commissioners were first to 
consider at what point it was understood that university, 
education should commence." He then continued : " Cer- 
tainly not with the alphabet, for reasons of expediency 
and impracticability, as well from the obvious sense of the 
Legislature." He then pointed out with great ability the 
high objects which the different grades of education were 
to subserve and the grand and beneficent results which 
a nation would reap from a good school system. The 
grammar schools or colleges, which he characterized as 
" institutions intermediate between the primary schools 
and University," he called " the passage of entrance for 
youths into the university." He sketched an outline of 
the studies which might be pursued with advantage in the 
different grades of institutions, and pointed out the great 
and peculiar benefits which each of the grades of learning 
would be instrumental in bestowing upon a people. In 
this long and singularly able report, he presented reasons 
for erecting the university in the centre of the Common- 
wealth on the site' occupied by Central College. In the 
Legislature of Virginia Cabell held with Jefferson that 
the best interests of the cause of intellectual culture in 
Virginia would be subserved by erecting the buildings 
which were to be dedicated to learning, near to Charlotte- 
ville, which was near the home of Jefferson, and he labored 
with great ability to induce the Legislature to agree upon 
the proposed site. As the vote was being taken mem- 
bers of the Assembly spoke with warm eloquence. Judge 
Briscoe G. Baldwin, a member of the opposition to Cabell, 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 4I 

withdrew his objections, and : " In the name of Virginia, 
in the name of the dear land of his nativity, by that proud 
and dignified character which she had always borne," he 
conjured the members to " unite in the vote for the uni- 
versity. Great in arms," he declared, " great in charac- 
ter, she requires only to be great in science. Let us 
raise," he continued, " a pillar of fire to conduct her foot- 
steps. If we make a retrogade movement now, if having 
accumulated a fund for education we refuse to appropriate 
it in this honorable way, we may, with the old Castilian, 
live to blush for our country. Let us, then, unite ; let us 
do our duty. He shall have lived to little purpose who 
does not know that in political matters delay breeds dan- 
ger. There is a tide in the affairs of nations as of men. 
Let us, then, all unite — let us erect a temple in which our 
youths may assemble in honor of science. Virginia ! dear 
land of my birth ! protectress of my rights ! to thy glory 
let us consecrate the present hour ! " Cabell in a letter 
to Jefferson, under date of Jan. i8th, 1819, speaking 
of this debate said : " Having left the House before the 
critical vote on the site, to avoid the shock of feeling, 
which I should have been compelled to sustain, I did not 
hear Mr. Baldwin. But I am told the scene was truly 
affecting. A great part of the House was in tears ; and 
on the rising of the House, the Eastern members hovered 
around Mr. Baldwin ; some shook him by the hand : 
others solicited an introduction. Such magnanimity in a 
defeated adversary excited universal applause." 

At the first meeting of the Board of Visitors, Jefferson 
was requested to become the Rector of the University. 
He consented to do so. He himself drew the plans for 
the edifices which were to be arranged in a parallelogram 
and connected with each other by piazzas. Each of the 

* Ibid., p. 150. 



42 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

buildings was to be of a different style of architecture and 
to illustrate the styles of architecture of different ages. 
The small village near where Jefferson lived was to become 
an academic town. The houses for the professors were 
artistically located. Every day when the weather was 
fair and the venerable statesman was strong enough to do 
so, he might be seen riding on horseback to inspect the 
rising walls of the new centre of learning, or looking at 
them through a telescope from a terrace near his mansion. 
Sometimes he would give the workmen plans, drawn by 
his own hand, to guide them in their work. 

Ex-President John Adams, when about eighty-two 
years of age, wrote letters of encouragement to the aged 
Jefferson. In one of these letters, dated May 26th, 1817, 
he said : " I congratulate you, and Madison, and Monroe, 
on your noble employment in founding a University. 
From such a noble triumvirate, the world will expect 
something very great and very new ; but if it contains 
anything quite original, and very excellent, I fear the 
prejudices are too deeply rooted to suffer it to last long, 
though it may be acceptable at first." 

During the years in which the buildings of the Univer- 
sity of Virginia were being erected it would once in a 
while happen that the Legislature would not appropriate 
as much money for the fane of knowledge as the Board 
of Visitors desired. On April 9th, 1822, Jefferson wrote 
to General Breckenridge, saying: " Our part is to pursue 
with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right 
or left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, 
assured that the public approbation will in the end be 
with us. * * * If^ however, the ensuing session should 
still refuse their patronage, a second or a third will think 
better, and result finally in fulfilling the object of our 
aim, the securing to our country a full and perpetual in- 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 43 

stitution for all the useful sciences ; one which will restore 
us to our former station in the confederacy. * * * The 
public opinion is advancing. It is coming to our aid, and 
will force the institution on to consummation. The num- 
bers are great, and many, from great distances, who visit 
it daily, as an object of curiosity. They become strength- 
ened if friends, converted, if enemies, and all loud and zeal- 
ous advocates, and will shortly give full tone to the public 
voice. Our motto should be, " Be not wearied in well- 
doing." Although Jefferson spoke thus encouragingly 
he had declared to Cabell, under date of Jan. 28th, 1819: 
" It is vain to give us the name of a University without 
the means of making it so." 

In a paper to the Directors of the " Literary Fund," 
dated Nov. 29th, 1821, Jefferson, alluding to the archi- 
tecture of the university buildings, said : " We had, there- 
fore, no supplementary guide but our own judgments, 
which we have exercised conscientiously, in adopting a 
scale and style of building, believed to be proportioned 
to the respectability, the means, and the wants of our 
country, and such as will be approved in any future con- 
dition it may attain. We owed to it to do, not what was 
to perish with ourselves, but what would remain, be re- 
spected, and preserved through other ages, and we fondly 
hope that the instruction which may flow from this insti- 
tution, kindly cherished, by advancing the minds of our 
youth with the growing science of the times, and elevat- 
ing the views of our citizens generally, to the practice of 
the social duties and the functions of self-government, 
may ensure to our country the reputation, the safety and 
prosperity, and all the other blessings, which experience 
proves to result from the cultivation and improvement 
of the general mind ; and, without going into the monitory 
history of the ancient world, in all its quarters, and at all 



44 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

its periods, that of the soil on which we live, and of its 
occupants, indigenous and immigrant, teaches the awful 
lesson, that no nation is permitted to live in ignorance 
with impunity. " * 

The correspondence of Jefferson respecting the Uni- 
versity of Virginia was large. A volume of five hundred 
and twenty eight pages, made up of letters and papers in 
large measure respecting the university, written by Jef- 
ferson, and J. C. Cabell, has been by the publisher J. W. 
Randolph, given to the public. 

Who can estimate the value of academies, colleges, 
and universities to nations? In his sixth Annual Mes- 
sage to Congress, Jefferson, urging the founding of a 
great university at Washington, said : " A public institu- 
tion can alone supply those sciences which, though rarely 
called for, are yet necessary to complete the circle, all 
the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the 
country, and some of them to its preservation." To 
these words of Jefferson's might be added words by John 
Adams in his " Principal Republics of the World " upon the 
imperative necessity to a republic to support public uni- 
versities. The institutions of learning which were founded 
in America at a time when the people were poor, have 
by the statesmen which they have given to the world, 
more than repaid the United States, for all the money 
which has ever been expended upon them. In 1774 an 
American Congress convened at Philadelphia, to take into 
consideration the grave misunderstanding existing be- 
tween England and her Colonies. This Congress issued 
State papers which will forever excite the admiration of 
the student of history. The important arguments which 
they contain were clothed in words which for their ele- 
gance and force would have done honor to a Cicero. 

* Ibid., p. 470. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 45 

Pitt, the celebrated English minister — one of the greatest 
statesmen of his age, — in a speech deHvered in Parliament, 
aijiong other remarks upon this distinguished Continental 
Congress, said : " I must declare and avow, that in all 
my reading and study, — and it has been my favorite 
study : I have read Thucydides, and have studied and 
admired the master states of the world, — that for solidity 
of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, 
under such a complication of circumstances, no nation or 
body of men can stand in preference to the General 
Congress at Philadelphia." * These words of the eloquent 
Pitt might well have led members of Parliament to ask 
themselves how it happened that the statesmen of Amer- 
ica were of such a high order of men. To such a ques- 
tion it might have been answered that in the Anglo-Saxon 
branch of the human family in America that society had 
not only been embellished and elevated but had been 
made stable, and in some degree wise, by means of insti- 
tutions of learning ; — by means of the people wisely 
cultivating the minds which God had given them. 
Whoever will review the lives of the members of the 
Congress of 1776 — the Congress in which the Indepen- 
dence of the Colonies from the Crown of England was 
declared, — will see that a large number of these distin- 
guished men had studied within walls of learning of a 
high grade. Any one who will review the history of 
these men will be deeply .impressed as he observes the 
educational advantages which many of them had enjoyed. 
Of the fifty-five men who were charged with the highly 
momentous work of framing the Constitution of the 
United States, at least nine had studied in Princeton 
College, four in Yale, three in Harvard, two in Columbia, 
one in the University of Pennsylvania, and five, six, or 

* Hanyard's " Parliamentary Hist.," vol. xviii., p. 151. 



46 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

seven in the University of William and Mary. In that 
distinguished company Scotland had also a representa- 
tive, who had studied in three of her universities. There 
was one member who had studied in Glasgow, another 
had been a student in Christ Church, Oxford, who with 
three other of the members had been students of law in 
the Temple — indeed, it is said that forty-five of the mem- 
bers of this Congress had received collegiate instruction. It 
would be highly instructive to note how some, if not 
indeed all, of the remaining number of these men had 
studied in grammar schools or had indirectly received 
benefits from institutions of the highest grades of learn- 
ing. For instance, Benjamin Franklin had studied in a 
grammar school in which it is not perhaps too much to 
say that a higher course of secular instruction was given 
than is to be obtained even in some institutions called 
universities in Roman Catholic countries. He was a man 
whose fame as a philosopher and man of letters was es- 
tablished in America and in Europe. He had moreover 
studied in the library in Philadelphia which he had helped 
to found — an institution which might be called a silent 
university. He had been the means of founding, about 
the year 1749, an academy in Pennsylvania which had 
become the university of that commonwealth. He had 
been an ardent scientific student. He had been made a 
Fellow of the Royal Society in England and had received 
the degree of Doctor from Oxford, Edinburgh and St. 
Andrews — some of the greatest of the universities of 
Great Britain : — not to speak of other honors which had 
been conferred upon him. In a letter to the first Presi- 
dent of King's College — now Columbia, — Franklin had 
written: "I think, with you, that nothing is more im- 
portant to the public weal than to form and train up 
youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are, in 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 47 

my opinion, the strength of the State, — much more so 
than riches and arms, which, under the management of 
ignorance and wickedness, often draw on destruction in- 
stead of providing for the safety of the people ; and 
though the culture bestowed on many should be success- 
ful with few, yet the influence of the few, and the service 
in their power may be very great." Franklin's labors in 
behalf of education had been one of his noblest under- 
takings. Also in the Convention in which the Constitu- 
tion of the United States was framed there was Roger 
Sherman, who had never been enabled to go to college. 
He had nobly learned the trade of a tallow chandler, and 
also that of shoemaker. Left an orphan in his youth he 
had provided for his mother during her long life. He 
had with his earnings provided for his younger brothers 
the blessings of college instruction. He had managed 
to study law and to be duly admitted to the bar. For 
years he had furnished the astronomical calculations for 
an almanac published in New York. In the church which 
he attended he had been made a deacon. As treasurer 
of Yale College he showed his interest in its welfare. 
He had served his State in various high capacities and 
had for many years been the Mayor of New Haven. For 
many years he had been a member of the Upper House 
of the Legislature of Connecticut. He had been a judge 
of the Court of Common Pleas and for twenty-three 
years, a judge of the Superior Court. He had been a 
member of the Continental Congress in 1774 and in every 
other Continental Congress except when prevented going 
to Congress by a law of rotation then in force. He had 
signed the Declaration of Independence and also the first 
Constitution of the States. Next to Franklin he was 
the most aged member of the Convention. It would be 
interesting to here pause to contemplate the culture 



48 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

which each member of the distinguished assembly had 
received through a wise policy which had been early 
adopted in the colonies of fostering letters. George 
Washington had only indirectly been helped in acquiring 
knowledge through institutions of a high grade of learn- 
mg. He had, however, acquired in many respects a 
remarkably good education. Sufifice it here to say that 
many years before he became a member of the convention 
he had had the title of LL.D. conferred upon him. As 
I write I have before me a printed copy of the words 
with which the learned faculty of Harvard College con- 
ferred the degree upon him. It was declared that he was 
a man whose " knowledge and patriotic ardor are mani- 
fest to all," and that he " merits the highest honor, Doc- 
tor of Laws, the law of nature and nations, and the civil 
law." Washington did not approve of titles of nobility, 
which was perhaps one reason why he would not append 
to his name his title of LL.D. His life-long interest in 
the welfare of the University of William and Mary in 
Virginia and of his connection with it for years as its 
Chancellor need not here be dwelt upon. He was espe- 
cially interested in the science of government and agri- 
cultural science. Before going to the Convention he had 
written, or copied from papers which it has been claimed 
were written by Madison, a description of the forms of 
government of many lands. The Constitution of the 
United States, formed though it was by a singularly gifted 
body of men, was, before being adopted by the " people," 
examined by many assemblies, in which were a large 
number of representatives of the seats of learning of the 
new world. 

In the highly valuable and quite lengthy Report 
which Jefferson when in his seventy-seventh year, as 
Chairman of a Commission to select a site for a State 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 49 

University, with the concurrence of Madison and col- 
leagues, wrote, or, finished, at an inn, on August 1st, 1818, 
and sent to the Legislature of Virginia, after, in a learned 
manner, dwelling on the very important objects which 
would be attained by founding elementary schools, he 
added : " And this brings us to the point at which are to 
commence the higher branches of education, of which the 
Legislature requires the development; those, for exam- 
ple, which are, 

" To form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on 
whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so 
much to depend ; 

" To expound the principles and structure of govern- 
ment, the laws which regulate the intercourse of nations, 
those formed municipally for our own government, and a 
sound spirit of legislation, which, banishing all arbitrary 
and unnecessary restraint on individual action, shall leave 
us free to do whatever does not violate the equal rights 
of another ; 

" To harmonize and promote the interests of agricul- 
ture, manufactures and commerce, and by well informed 
views of political economy to give a free scope to the 
public industry; 

" To develop the reasoning faculties of our youth, 
enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals, and instill into 
them the precepts of virtue and order ; 

" To enlighten them with mathematical and physical 
science^, which advance the arts, and administer to the 
health, the subsistence, and comforts of human life ; 

" And, generally, to form them to habits of reflection 
and correct action, rendering them examples of virtue to 
others, and of happiness within themselves. 

" These are the objects of that higher grade of educa- 
tion, the benefits and blessings of which the Legislature 



50 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

now propose to provide for the good and ornament of 
their country, the gratification and happiness of their 
fellow-citizens, of the parent especially, and his progeny, 
on whom all his affections are concentrated." * [j- 

The more one duly reflects upon the benefits which 
Jefferson pointed out will be reaped by nations who 
cherish the interests of useful learning, the more he will 
be astonished at the greatness of their value. It may be 
well to here consider some of the innumerable ways in 
which nations are paid back the money which they 
expend on institutions of a high grade of learning. When 
nations, needing on some great occasion the services of 
men of intelligence and culture, are enabled to call upon 
citizens who have passed through a high school, a college 
or a university, they have an assurance that the men 
whom they propose to entrust with momentous duties 
have at least received a certain amount of mental cultiva- 
tion. In the year 1871, a highly interesting scene — a 
scene over which the historian may be expected to 
linger with pleasure, and to dwell with peculiar satisfac- 
tion upon the holy influence which it will exert upon the 
history of the world, was enacted in the attractive city 
of Geneva in Switzerland. The city of Geneva, over 
which sweeps the energizing air borne from the Alps or 
from the beautifully picturesque lake upon which it looks, 
has witnessed scenes upon which have hung, in large 
measure, the destinies of the cause of civil and religious 
liberty in the world, but one may doubt whether it has 
ever witnessed a single short act in the great drama of 
history, which has been followed by such momentous 
results, as the one which was enacted in the year 1871 — 
a scene in which almost every — if not indeed every — 
actor was a graduate of some American, or English, or 

*Ibid., p. 435. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 5 1 

European seat of learning. A band of men assembled 
to settle by arbitration a fearfully grave dispute upon the 
satisfactory settlement of which may be said to have per- 
haps hung the peace of the two Anglo-Saxon divisions of 
the human race, — indeed to no inconsiderable extent, the 
peace of the world. This is not the place to dwell upon 
the deep feeling with which the people of the United 
States viewed the injuries which they had received from 
Great Britain, or upon the vastness of the losses which 
the Republic had suffered, from armed vessels which 
the British Government, notwithstanding treaties, and 
obligations of peace and of honor, when the United 
States was engaged in a civil war — a war in which the 
most sacred interests of the human race were involved, 
— had permitted to be built, manned, and harbored in 
British ports, to do all the injury that they could to the 
Republic in its hour of sore trial. Nor is this the place 
to dwell upon all the horrors which might have followed 
if this ill-will had been allowed to smoulder until it should 
break out into flames of war — until the people of Great 
Britain and of the United States, upon whom the Al- 
mighty has stamped the lineaments of brotherhood, had 
done themselves the deadliest injury in their power. A 
calm and intelligent discussion before a Court of Arbitra- 
tion — most of the members of which were disinterested 
and learned judges —whose decision was binding upon 
Great Britain and upon the United States — in a manner 
recognized by the world as just, wise and highly honor- 
able to both nations, not only set at rest the cause of 
quarrel, but opened the way for a reconciliation between 
the two nations, at once impressive and sacred, and 
cleared a path for all the blessings which follow in the 
train of peace. Moreover, an example was given to all 
nations — an example which may be expected, in critical 



> 



$2 ' A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

junctures which may arise in the history of any nation, to 
prevent the evils flowing from war. 

It is certainly wise for republics to take all measures 
that need to be taken to secure such a diffusion of a high 
grade of knowledge as is demanded by their best interests. 
The youth who has been instructed in institutions of 
learning by the State may indeed perhaps win an honor- 
able renown as a statesman which may be valuable to him 
personally, but in doing so he must become the servant of 
the people. By preserving the liberties, guarding the 
property, augmenting the happiness of communities, the 
statesman may render the commonwealth services of 
priceless value. 

Leaving for the present the interesting contemplation 
of the grandeur of the work which colleges have been 
enabled to accomplish by helping to give wisdom to the 
patriotic representatives of nations, the connection be- 
tween a high grade of culture and what may be called a 
certain class of inventions, may well attract the attention 
of the thoughtful philanthropist. As a youth who has 
studied in a common school will have in some respects 
a wider range of thought than one who has never been 
taught to read and write, so one who has been instructed 
in a grammar or high school, in a college or university, 
maybe expected to have, in some respects, a wider sweep 
of thought than one who has simply received what is 
called a primary school education. It has often happened 
that a young man who has been enabled to study in a 
grammar school or in a university has had faculties de- 
veloped which might never have manifested themselves 
to the world, had he simply been taught how to read and 
write and cipher. The services which men who have 
enjoyed the advantage of being instructed in learned 
centres of thought have rendered the world by applying 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 53 

the discoveries of science to the useful purposes of life 
is well worthy the careful consideration of the statesman. 

No one can realize the indebtedness of the world to 
institutions of a high grade of learning, who has not 
traced the history of inventions which without the aid of 
science could never have been made. Innumerable con- 
sequences, direct and indirect, flow from every new truth 
respecting the properties of matter made known to man. 
The more one considers the extent to which the discov- 
eries of science are applied to the affairs of every-day 
life, the more he will be amazed at the lofty mission in 
which institutions of a high grade of learning are engaged. 
Every citizen in the United States enjoys in one way or 
another, blessings which have come to him through the 
instrumentality of science. It is interesting to a thought- 
ful mind to consider the advantage it is to any nation 
to have among its citizens men capable of intelligently 
engaging in the work of making, with the aid of science, 
mechanical combinations, which multiply the products of 
industry, beneficially affect commerce, increase the com- 
forts of life, and very greatly contribute to the prosperity 
and well-being of commonwealths. 

It may here be instructive to pause to consider — even 
though but little effort be made to unfold them in their 
fulness, — a few of very many illustrations which might be 
given, of the services which institutions, of what may be 
called, a higher grade of learning, have, directly or indi- 
rectly, rendered the industrial arts, A contemporary of 
Jefferson's, — but four years his senior, — was James Watt, 
of Scotland. The father of this gifted man was a car- 
penter and shipwright. His mother was an estimable 
woman who herself gave much attention to the education 
of her son. The schools of Scotland were open to her 
youth — schools which were probably better than any in 



54 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

Europe, unless the schools of Holland be excepted. In 
the exciting days of the great Reformation, John Knox 
had declared, in language now become quaint, " That no 
father, of what estate or condition that ever he may be, 
use his children at his own fantasie, especially in their 
youthhead, but all must be compelled to bring up their 
youth in learning and virtue." In 1696, Scotland had, as 
Holland had done before her, established a public-school 
system, which in innumerable ways proved to be an in- 
valuable blessing to her people — indeed to the world. In 
due time, James Watt entered the grammar school of the 
town of Greenock, in which he lived. There he studied 
not only English and Mathematics, but also Greek and 
Latin and other studies which were destined to be useful 
to him in life. He also enjoyed the advantage of having 
at his command in his father's house some scientific books. 
Young Watt finished his course at the grammar school, 
and, in accordance with his father's advice, undertook to 
learn a trade. He proposed to become a maker of mathe- 
matical instruments. With this end in view he went 
to Glasgow, but, in that city — now famous for its culture 
and wealth, — there was then found no one in business 
who could give him the instruction which he sought. 
Some relations he had in Glasgow were happy in en- 
joying the acquaintance of the highly learned Thomas 
Dick, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Univer- 
sity of Glasgow. This distinguished man whose elo- 
quent and fascinating book, " On the Improvement 
of Society by the Diffusion of Knowledge," is not 
the least valuable of the services which he rendered the 
world, gave Watt excellent advice, which resulted in his 
spending some time in London in acquiring his trade. 
On his return to Glasgow Prof. Dick and his associate 
professors arranged that Watt should have a place in the 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 55 

university building in which he could make and sell 
mathematical instruments and in which he could repair 
the valuable instruments used in illustrating the lectures 
of the professors. The university even possessed a 
model of an engine which illustrated the very limited 
application which had been made of steam, up to that 
period, to the mechanic arts. 

Watt enjoyed the great privilege of using the valuable 
library of the university, and the professors and students 
threw open what stores of books they themselves pos- 
sessed to the poor yet energetic and already in some 
respects learned young man. He became a member of 
a club which numbered among its members the literati 
of Glasgow, — including Adam Smith who was for years 
a professor of the University of Glasgow as well as a 
distinguished writer on Political Economy, — Prof. Robert 
Simson, the celebrated restorer of the most important 
treatises of ancient geometers, the learned professors 
Anderson and Dick, and Prof. Joseph Black, the 
discoverer of latent heat, who in the opinion of the 
very distinguished scientist, Arago, should be classed 
among the most eminent chemists of the eighteenth 
century. These gentlemen used to visit Watt's room 
in the university. The bosom friend of the ingenious 
mathematical instrument-maker of the university was 
John Robison, who was a student but would have been, 
had it not been for his youth, made an assistant to 
Prof. Dick. John Robison became an eminent professor 
in the University of Edinburgh^ but he is perhaps still 
more distinguished as the originator of the Encyclopedia 
Britannica. Students were accustomed to go to Watt, 
very much as though he were a professor, to be aided in 
their studies. In order to the better master scientific 
problems he studied German and Italian, so as to read 



$6 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

what was written in those languages on scientific ques- 
tions. His friend John Robison suggested to him, and 
counselled with him, on the feasibility of constructing a 
locomotive, or " fiery chariot " as it was playfully called 
by Watt. 

Prof. Black having experimented with water had made 
a marvellous discovery out of which many very interest- 
ing consequences flowed. Little do people realize that 
even in ice there is, besides water, an imponderable sub- 
stance, called caloric, so perfectly hidden and distributed 
that the most sensitive thermometer will not reveal its 
existence. Heat, imperceptible to known senses, one of 
the constituent principles of ice ! No wonder that cer- 
tain facts about steam puzzled Watt, who had been ex- 
perimenting with the model of the so-called Newcomen 
engine owned by the university. Prof. Black, however, 
explained to him the interesting phenomena of latent heat, 
and in a remarkably kind manner encouraged the young 
man to continue to endeavor to construct a steam-engine 
which would be of practical utility to the world. 

After spending six years in the university building 
Watt changed his abode, taking to himself a wife ; still, 
however, keeping up his connection with the university 
and still being known for a number of years as its mathe- 
matical instrument-maker. The experiments which he 
continued to make Math steam were so expensive, that he 
was obliged to' borrow money from time to time from 
Prof. Black. The professor's salary in the university, 
however, was not large and his means were not sufficient 
to enable him to do all that it was necessary to do in 
constructing a steam-engine, especially in an age when 
making machinery was very much more expensive than 
it is at the present day. Dr. Black, happily, had a learned 
friend — Dr. Roebuck — who possessed considerable means 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 57 

and was of an enterprising disposition. To Dr. Roebuck 
he explained the scientific principles on which Watt had 
planned a steam-engine. Dr. Black finally succeeded in 
inducing Dr. Roebuck to become financially interested 
with Watt in his difficult undertaking. Dr. Roebuck 
proved a kind friend to Watt and advanced quite a large 
amount of money to him, receiving for so doing an inter- 
est in the invention. Watt's friend, Robison, has left on 
record the following statement : " I remember Mrs. Roe- 
buck's remarking one evening ' Jamie is a queer lad, and 
without the Doctor, his invention would have been lost ; 
but Dr. Roebuck wont let it perish.' " Watt's trial en- 
gine — owing in large measure to the difficulty, incidental 
to the period, in securing the services of workmen capable 
of making, with sufficient exactness, its various parts — 
was not a success. Dr. Roebuck, becoming embarrassed in 
business, was not able to continue to bear his share of the 
expenses and Dr. Black had to loan Watt the money with 
which to secure his first patent for the steam-engine. At 
this juncture, rendered peculiarly sad by a cause which 
need not here be dwelt upon, a gentleman — Prof. Small — 
who had been an instructor in the University of William 
and Mary, of Virginia, and had returned to Scotland, 
rendered Watt invaluable services. Prof. Small had been 
very kind to Jefferson when at the university and the 
exalted esteem in which Jefferson when President of the 
United States held the worthy Scotchman, who had 
brought to America Scotch learning, may be inferred 
from a long letter of affectionate counsel to his grandson, 
Thomas Jefferson Randolph, dated Nov. 24th, 1808. The 
statesman, after speaking of the great temptations through 
which he had, as an orphan, passed, continued : " I had 
the good fortune to become acquainted very early with 
some characters of very high standing, and to feel the in- 



58 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

cessant wish that I could ever become what they were. 
Under temptations and difficulties, I would ask myself 
what would Dr. Small, Mr. Wythe, Peyton Randolph do 
in this situation ? What course in it will insure me their 
approbation ? I am certain that this mode of deciding 
on my conduct tended more to its correctness than any 
reasoning powers I possessed. Knowing the even and 
dignified line they pursued, I could never doubt for a 
moment which of two courses would be in character for 
them." If it was happy for Jefferson to have Prof. Small 
as his instructor and warm friend it was especially happy 
for Watt to have him as his bosom friend to whom he 
could confide every burden of his heart. Prof. Small 
offered to help Watt to the extent of his means, and 
finally induced his friend and partner, Matthew Boulton, 
an accomplished manufacturer, to purchase Dr. Roebuck's 
interest in Watt's, — as yet unsuccessful, — invention of a 
steam-engine. Very many scientific facts had to be ex- 
amined before the wonderful contrivance which was in 
the inventor's mind could be completed. The thorough- 
ness of the experiments made are attested by the specifi- 
cations of the various patents which were granted Watt. 
Prof. Small who was in reality a partner of Boulton and 
Watt, died just as Watt had succeeded in making a suc- 
cessful steam-engine. One of his last acts was to draw a 
Bill, petitioning Parliament to give Watt certain rights 
without which he could not go to the expense of putting 
up works in which to build steam-engines. 

The esteem which Watt felt for the learned friends 
which he had made in the University of Glasgow may be 
illustrated by some incidents recorded by Samuel Smiles 
in his fascinating biography of Watt.* There were men 
who attempted to deprive Watt of the rewards which 

* " Lives of Boulton and Watt," p. 464. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 59 

were justly his, for having after very many years of labor, 
given to the world, — one might almost say, — his magical 
contrivance. Watt wrote to his old friend Dr. Black, 
that Prof. Robison had left his class of Natural Philosophy 
in the University of Edinburgh and had travelled a long 
distance to testify respecting the invention of the steam- 
engine and had done " wonders." It may be added that 
when Prof. Robison returned to Edinburgh his natural 
philosophy class received him with three cheers. The 
professor gave them a short account of the trial, charac- 
terizing it as, "not more the cause of Watt v. Horn- 
blower, than of science against ignorance." " When I 
had finished," the professor added in a letter to Watt, " I 
got another plaudit, that Mrs. Siddons would have rel- 
ished." * When Dr. Black heard of the issue of the trial, 
tears coursed down his face. " It 's very foolish," he 
said, " but I can't help it when I hear of anything good 
to Jamie Watt." Dr. Black, not long after he had re- 
ceived a letter from Watt, was found sitting in his chair, 
dead. Watt sorrowfully wrote to Prof. Robison respect- 
ing Prof. Black : " I may say that to him I owe, in a 
great measure, what I am ; he taught me to reason and 
experiment in natural philosophy, and wasa true friend and 
philosopher, whose loss will always be lamented while I 
live. We may all pray that our latter end may be like 
his; he has truly gone to sleep in the arms of his Creator, 
and been spared all the regrets attendant on a more linger- 
ing exit. I could dwell longer on this subject but regrets 
are unavailing, and only tend to enfeeble our own minds, 
and make them less able to bear the ills we cannot avoid. 
Let us cherish the friends we have left, and do as much 
good as we can in our day ! " f 

One of the galaxy of learned men >^ho may be said to 

* Ibid., p. 64. t Ibid., p. 465. 



60 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

have aided Watt in solving some of the great problems 
with which he had to deal in his attempt to apply some 
profound discoveries of various sciences to the mechanic 
arts, was an American philosopher and statesman. Benja- 
min *Franklin was representing the United States in 
Europe when Watt was endeavoring to construct a steam- 
engine. Franklin introduced by letter Prof. Small to Mr. 
Boulton. The learned Matthew Boulton — who was a 
distinguished manufacturer, associated with him Prof. 
Small and the professor's friend Watt. Boulton had 
before Prof. Small prevailed upon him to become inter- 
ested in Watt's steam-engine — indeed at one of the 
darkest hours in Watt's life — sent to Franklin a model of 
a steam-engine requesting Franklin to give an opinion to 
him respecting the possibility of perfecting on scientific 
principles such a mechanical contrivance as the proposed 
engine. Franklin had received in a free grammar school 
in New England, a better education than could be 
obtained in his day in quite a large number of European 
universities. He was recognized as one of the most 
eminent scientists of his age and was connected with. the 
Academy of Sciences of France. Although his reputation 
as a philosopher may be considered as having been some- 
what cast into the shade by his distinction as a statesman, 
his influence as a philosopher has been remarkably far- 
reaching. To Boulton, Franklin wrote a very encouraging 
letter and made suggestions which have been very widely, 
— if not universally, — adopted in the fire-places of steam- 
engines. This letter was not only valuable on account of 
its wise suggestions, but was highly interesting for the 
encouragement which it gave to Boulton to believe that 
science could overcome the dif^culties in the way of con- 
structing a steam-engine, — indeed, had it not been for 
this letter, Prof. Small might never have been enabled to 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 6l 

induce Boulton, who may be said to have been one of the 
most gifted and able manufacturers in very important 
respects, in England, to become interested with Watt in 
carrying to a successful issue, his highly useful invention. 
Watt lived to be eighty-three years of age and received 
many honors. The University of Glasgow conferred 
upon him the title of LL.D. and educated for him a 
son. During the very many years in which he had been 
engaged in the work of reducing steam to man's servi- 
tude, he had made many and great sacrifices. Although 
he had in the meantime made quite a large number of 
valuable inventions, and although he had become distin- 
guished as an engineer and had presented to the city of 
Glasgow, in whose service he had been at times engaged, 
a plan by which the Clyde River, which was then but a 
trout stream, has been made into one of the busiest 
water-highways of the world, yet he had been kept so im- 
poverished by his experiments with steam that he had to 
borrow trom his friend Prof. Black the means with which 
to secure the papers for his first patent for a steam-engine. 
Although his friend Robison had secured for him a 
position as engineer by the Russian Government at such 
a large salary that wealth was within his grasp, he had 
declined the position in order to serve the world by giving 
to man a mechanical combination of inestimable value, 
which he believed science capable of constructing. Watt 
in a sad hour had felt that he was not accomplishing any 
good for his fellow-man. When he had unbosomed this 
feeling to Prof. Small he had been encouraged to go on, 
and when his darkest hour had come upon him the kind 
professor had offered to help him to the extent of his 
means and had followed up his words by acts of great 
kindness. But if Watt felt that he was doing no good 
when he was engaged in applying profound principles of 



62 A STATE SHOULD HAVE. A UNIVERSITY. 

science to the mechanic arts, not so thought the world 
when his great mission in Hfe was ended. 

Scarcely a fortnight after Watt's death Lord Jeffrey in 
an Edinburgh paper* voiced a feeling ascription of praise 
to a great benefactor of the human race. In the course of 
his warm tribute to James Watt, he said : " This name 
fortunately needs no commemoration of ours, for he that 
bore it survived to see it crowned with undisputed and 
unenvied honors ; and many generations will probably pass 
away, before it shall have gathered " all its fame." We 
have said that Mr. Watt was the great Improver of the 
steam-engine ; but, in truth, as to all that is admirable in 
its structure, or vast in its utility, he should rather be 
described as its /;zz'£';z/cr. * * * By his admirable contriv- 
ance, it has become a thing stupendous alike for its force 
and its flexibility, — for the prodigious power which it can 
exert, and the ease, and precision, and ductility, with 
which that power can be varied, distributed and applied. 
The trunk of an elephant, that can pick up a pin, and 
rend an oak, is as nothing to it. It can engrave a seal, and 
crush masses of obdurate metal before it — draw out, with- 
out breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift a ship 
of war like a bauble in the air. It can embroider muslin 
and forge anchors, — cut steel into ribands, and impel 
loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and waves. 

" It would be difficult to estimate the value of the 
benefits which these inventions have conferred upon this 
country. There is no branch of industry that has not 
been indebted to them ; and, in all the most material, 
they have not only widened most magnificently the field 
of its exertions, but multiplied a thousand-fold the 
amount of its production. It was our improved steam- 
engine, in short, that fought th^e battles of Europe, and 

* The Scotsman, Sept. 4th, 1819. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 63 

exalted and sustained, through the late tremendous con- 
test, the political greatness of our land. It is the same 
great power which now enables us to pay the interest of 
our debt, and to maintain the arduous struggle in which 
we are still engaged [18 19], with the skill and capital of 
countries less oppressed with taxation. But these are poor 
and narrow views of its importance. It has increased 
indefinitely the mass of human comforts and enjoyments; 
and rendered cheap and accessible, all over the world, 
the materials of wealth and prosperity. It has armed 
the feeble hand of man, in short, with a power to which 
no limits can be assigned ; completed the dominion of 
mind over the most refractory qualities of matter; and 
laid a sure foundation for all those future miracles of 
mechanic power which are to aid and reward the labours 
of after generations. It is to the genius of one man, too, 
that all this is mainly owing! And certainly no man ever 
bestowed such a gift on his kind. The blessing is not 
only universal but unbounded ; and the fabled inventors 
of the plough and the loom, who were deified by the 
erring gratitude of their rude contemporaries, conferred 
less important benefits on mankind than the inventor of 
our present steam-engine." 

If Lord Jeffrey, as early as the year 18 19, could say 
that the steam-engine had multiplied the productions of 
British industry a thousand-fold, how should one describe 
at the present day, its value to mankind ? Suffice it to 
say that machinery in modern times accomplishes prob- 
ably more and better work in England alone — to say 
nothing of what it performs in other divisions of the 
globe, — than could the hands of all the men and women, 
and the labor of all the beasts of burden, in the world, 
before the invention of the steam-engine. While in the 
last century some nations, under sadly mistaken views of 



64 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

economy, or for other equally unhappy reasons, refused 
to support grammar schools or universities, Scotland has 
no reason to regret the money which she expended in 
supporting public primary and grammar schools, and 
on maintaining a university. It was more natural that 
Scotland with its free schools should give to the world 
such a cultured intellect as that of Watt's, than it would 
have been for any other country in Europe to have done 
so, — Holland — a land of heroic history, to whom Scot- 
land herself may be regarded as indebted for her public 
school system — alone excepted. 

It would be well to compare the puny strength of man 
with that of the- steam-engine — to make an estimate of 
the money value of a single invention to Great Britain. 
To make such a calculation would require a vast array of 
astonishingly instructive figures. Suffice it to say that 
these figures, when summed up, would make a grand 
total which would eloquently illustrate the wisdom of 
that statesmanship which guards well the interests of 
high culture — which provides as did Jefferson's educa- 
tional bill of 1779, that youth especially gifted with 
genius and virtue — as often found in families of the poor 
as in those of the rich — " should be rendered by liberal 
education * * '^ without regard to wealth, birth, or other 
accidental condition or circumstance," if they so desired, 
" useful instruments of the public." * In an able defence 
of such a wise policy JefTerscSn in his " Notes on Virginia," 
added, to use his own words, that " by our plan which 
preserves the selection of the youth of genius from among 
the classes of the poor we hope to avail the State of 
those talents which nature has sown as liberally among 
the poor as the rich, but which perish without use, if 
not sought for and cultivated." I will here incidentally say 

* Jefferson's " Bill for the Better Diffusion of Knowledge," of 1779. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 65 

that Jefferson had perhaps been helped by Prof. Small, 
whom Scotland had given for a time to the United 
States, to duly appreciate the importance to nations of 
right views respecting the wisdom of securing to the 
people the far-reaching blessings of a wise intellectual 
culture. 

Watt when endeavoring to subject to man's servitude 
the mysterious power which steam was capable of exert- 
ing had at times fancied that he was doing no good in 
the world and had sorrowfully confided to Prof. Small 
his sorrow. But if Watt at times thus looked upon his 
great work, not so, at the last, did the people of Great 
Britain. At his death it was deemed eminently fitting 
that a monument should be erected to his memory in 
Westminster Abbey — among the statues of many of Great 
Britain's most illustrious sons. On the colossal statue 
erected to his honor, is written, the following epitaph : 
" Not to perpetuate a name which must endure while the 
peaceful arts flourish, but to show that mankind have 
learned to honor those who best deserve their gratitude, 
the King, his Ministers, and many of the Nobles and 
Commoners of the realm, raised this monu.ment to James 
Watt, who directing the force of an original genius early 
exercised in philosophic research to the improvement of 
the steam-engine, enlarged the resources of his country, 
increased the power of man, and rose to an eminent plaqe 
among the most illustrious followers of science, and "the' 
real benefactors of the world. Born at Greenock, 1736. 
Died at Heathfield, in Staffordshire, 18 19." 

Westminster Abbey was not to be the only place which 
was to have a statue of Watt. In Greenock, Scotland, 
where Watt received a free education, is a library in which 
are books which Watt presented to the town. The visitor 
as he enters this treasury of knowledge sees a statue of 
3 



66 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

the illustrious mechanician which was erected in his honor 
by the citizens of Greenock who assuredly did not regret 
having maintained a free grammar or high school in their 
midst. In Glasgow a grand colossal statue in bronze on a 
beautiful granite base testifies to the honor which Glasgow 
feels at having been the place in which the great idea of 
giving to mankind the modern steam-engine was conceived. 

Thinking of James Watt, Sir Walter Scott broke, one 
might almost say, into rapture. " It was my fortune," he 
says, " to meet him, whether in the body or in spirit it mat- 
ters not. There were assembled about half a score of our 
Northern Lights. * * * Amidst this company stood 
Mr. Watt, the man whose genius discovered the means of 
multiplying our national resources to a degree perhaps 
even beyond his own stupendous powers of calculation 
and combination ; bringing the treasures of the abyss to 
the summit of the earth; giving the feeble arm of man 
the momentum of an Afrite ; commanding manufactures 
to rise, as the rod of the prophet produced water in the 
desert; affording the means of dispensing with that time 
and tide which waits for no man ; and of sailing without 
that wind which defied the commands and threats of 
Xerxes himself. This potent commander of the elements, 
the abridger of time and space, this magician whose 
cloudy machinery has produced a change on the world, 
the effects of which, extraordinary as they are, are per- 
haps only now beginning to be felt, was not only the 
profound man of science, the most successful combiner 
of powers and calculator of numbers as adapted to practi- 
cal purposes, was not only one of the most generally 
well informed, but one of the best and kindest of human 
beings." 

Without dwelling longer on the praise bestowed on 
James Watt by his contemporaries, sufifice it to say that 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 6/ 

the more one reflects upon the vastness of the service 
which the man who invented the modern steam-engine 
rendered to the human race the more it will be realized 
that the world has reason to be thankful that Scotland 
adopted the wise policy of securing to her youth the 
blessing of something more than merely, what is com- 
monly called, a primary education. 

It may here be remarked that Watt and Prof. Robison 
and others had attempted to construct a travelling 
engine — or, as it is called in modern times, a locomotive, 
— indeed Watt had taken out a patent for such an 
invention. During Watt's life and for some years after 
his death, the so-called steam-carriage was but a rude, 
unwieldy, machine, that withal travelled at such a snail's- 
pace as to be profitably used for few, if for any purposes. 
One might doubt whether Watt and his learned associates 
ever pictured to themselves the fiery-horse of modern 
times — a mighty industrial agency effecting a revolution 
in the domain of human industry, — capable of even tire- 
lessly dragging comfortable coaches, almost as fast, if 
not indeed faster, than the eagle flies, between distant 
cities, or across continents, — doing more work than tens 
of millions of human laborers and horses could perform. 
The locomotive unites States and Territories, some of 
which might have remained separated forever, while others 
might have been to this day deserts, but for its useful aid. 
Indeed, the locomotive may yet be instrumental in nation- 
alizing — of uniting in a common citizenship — the people 
of continents. The gentlemen around whose heads gathers 
much of the fame of having invented the modern locomo- 
tive were George Stephenson and his son Robert Stephen- 
son. I had prepared an historical sketch of these mechani- 
cians and engineers illustrating somewhat minutely ways 
in which indirectly and directly they were indebted to 



68 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

institutions of higher learning for much of their success 
in Hfe. Suffice it, however, to say that the indirect in- 
fluence exerted by institutions of higher culture, such as 
academies and libraries and universities, is sometimes 
even vaster and more interesting than is their direct 
influence. One who will trace the sacrifices made by 
George Stephenson to give his son Robert a high educa- 
tion will be apt to feel that there is a silent eloquence in 
the noble structure in England known as the Stephenson 
Memorial which, with its surrounding grounds, marks the 
spot where stood the humble cottage in which Robert 
Stephenson was born, — a structure in which youth of both 
sexes receive school instruction and in which there is a 
reading-room for mechanics. 

A visitor to the great building in Washington in which 
are preserved the models of the thousands of inventions 
which have been given letters-patent by the Government 
of the United States, will see quite a good many simple 
contrivances which might have been invented — in some 
instances perhaps have been made, — by men or women 
who did not even know the letters of the alphabet. He 
would also see many inventions which he would recognize 
as the work of men, or of women, possessed of an intimate 
acquaintance with scientific truths. He would see surgi- 
cal articles, engineering, astronomical, and other contriv- 
ances, which he would instinctively feel were made by 
men or women possessed in no ordinary degree of scien- 
tific knowledge. Should the visitor examine, for example, 
such a piece of mechanism as that of the first electric 
telegraph instrument which Prof. Morse gave to the 
world, he could infer with certainty that such a scientific 
invention could not have been made by any one unable 
to read and write. What a part that instrument has 
already played in the history of the world ! Its work is 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 69 

like unto those of magic ! It is impossible to estimate 
fully the value of such a scientific invention to mankind ! 

The part which institutions of higher learning have 
acted in giving to the world the electric telegraph will be 
found by the careful student of Political Economy to be the 
more interesting, and the greater, the more searchingly it 
is examined. He will find that many, if not indeed every 
philosopher whose scientific experiments contributed to 
make it possible for man to sufficiently understand the 
mysterious powers which are brought into exercise in the 
electric telegraph, had been indebted for much, if not for 
all, of his education to institutions of higher learning. 
That certain phenomena, such as that amber and some 
other bodies when rubbed possess singular properties, 
attracted the attention of some learned men of two thou- 
sand and more years ago. The mysterious force which 
could be awakened by friction came to be called electricity. 
Its study and that of kindred phenomena became in time 
an abstruse science. Electricity is an imponderable, subtle 
agent which may be even said to pervade all matter and 
to be ever ready, if excited, to display its existence. 
Much that one would wish to know respecting electricity, 
science has not yet disclosed. She has even long declined 
to satisfy the curiosity of man by telling him whether elec- 
tricity is a material agent, or merely a property of matter, 
or whether the secret of its power is due to the vibrations 
of an ether. She has secrets for those who serve her 
which may be as interesting as are any that she has yet 
disclosed. 

The inventor of the first electric telegraph instrument 
was Samuel Finley Breese Morse. One of his grand- 
fathers had been President of Princeton College and his 
father was a clergynlan of wide learning who when a 
youth had graduated at Yale College. In due time 



70 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

Finley Morse — as he was sometimes called — was sent 
to Ya:le College. The Legislature of Connecticut had 
from the year 1701 taken a deep interest in providing for 
the support of its college. Although in the year 1755 
the yearly appropriation of funds was for a time discon- 
tinued on account of financial embarrassment brought 
upon the Colony, by the Canadian war, yet this loss to 
the college had been in some degree made good by the 
Legislature making a larger appropriation in the year 
1792 for its principal seat of learning than it had ever 
made before. The institution which had received many 
gifts from citizens was also more closely identified with 
the government of Connecticut than it had ever been 
before. With the handsome fund which the State appro- 
priated for the college, real estate was bought, three new 
academical buildings and a house for its president were 
erected, and a handsome addition made to its already 
valuable library. New professorships were established, 
and what is perhaps at present most worthy of notice " a 
complete philosophical and chemical apparatus " was pro- 
vided for this already celebrated centre of learning. 
Among the studies to which young Morse was introduced 
in college was the interesting science of electricity. The 
professor of natural philosophy in Yale College was the 
learned Prof. Jeremiah Day. Li his lectures, Dr. Day 
dwelt carefully on electricity.* Mr. Irenaeus Prime, in a 
very interesting biography of the distinguished inventor 
of the electric telegraph, states, after giving a record of the 
lectures delivered and the text-books used on electricity, 
by Prof. Day, that one of the professor's experiments 
with electricity " was the germ of the great invention that 
now daily and hourly astonishes the world, and has given 

' * Testimony given by Prof. Day in a court of law in the highly interesting 
" Life of Samuel F. B. Morse," by Samuel Irenseus Prime, p. 19. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. /I 

immortality of fame to the student who twenty years 
afterward, conceived the idea of making this experiment 
of practical value to mankind." Morse himself, alluding 
to one of the professor's experiments thus spoke : " It was 
the crude seed which took root in my mind, and grew 
up into form and ripened into the invention of the Tele- 
graph." Morse's able biographer adds : '^ But there was 
at the same time, in the faculty of Yale College, another 
illustrious man, to whom more than to Dr. Dwight or Dr. 
Day, Mr. Morse was indebted for those impressions which 
resulted finally in his great invention. Benjamin Silliman 
long held front rank among men of scierfce." After pay- 
ing a graceful tribute to Prof. Silliman's learning the 
biographer presents some highly interesting testimony 
delivered in a court of law by Prof. Silliman, respecting 
the care and thoroughness with which Morse had pursued 
the study of certain branches of electrical science. To 
the Rev. Mr. Morse, — the father of Samuel F. B. Morse, 
— Prof. McLean, of Princeton College, had sent for publi- 
cation a paper on electricity which might well excite the 
mind of the young man. After leaving college young 
Morse continued to pursue his studies in electricity 
studying under Prof. Dana of the University of New 
York and under Prof. Renwick of Columbia College. 

Morse, however gifted in intellect, was poor. His 
father had had his scanty means swept away by having 
indorsed for a friend. Thus to his sons he had bequeathed 
a debt instead of a fortune. After leaving college young 
Morse having taken lessons in painting was enabled to 
earn a subsistence by painting portraits. In order to ac- 
quire training as an artist he spent some years in Europe 
taking lessons of celebrated painters. In the year 1^32 
when on his way from France back to his native Ian;d, 
while conversing upon Benjamin Franklin's experiments 



72 A STATS SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

with electricity, a great thought came to him — a great 
thought respecting electricity which deeply agitated him. 
Henceforth, his mind was to be in travail until the elec- 
tric telegraph should be born. He withdrew from every 
one and noted in his pocket-book the wonderful plan 
which he had conceived. At night when he retired, 
sleep refused to throw her kindly mantle on him. He 
felt that the Deity had suddenly called him to act a great 
part in the history of civilization. From this period for 
many years, Morse was to heroically labor to impress 
upon the public mind, less gifted in some respects than 
his own, the value to the human race of an electric tele- 
graph. He was poor. Although he believed that he 
possessed the secret of bringing the inhabitants of distant 
parts of the world into instantaneous communication, and, 
although he might well feel that wealth and fame were 
hovering about him, he was too poor to make the costly 
experiments which the incredulous public required before 
it would credit the new surprise which science had in store 
for mankind. His situation became forlorn, and he had 
a family of three motherless children to provide for. 
Sad-hearted, — day after day was passing over his head. 
Should death overtake him all his labors for the human 
race might be lost to the world. Let a curtain here hide 
the sorrows and struggles of unrecognized genius. 

Happily, in the year 1835, Morse was appointed Pro- 
fessor of the Literature of Design in the University of the 
City of New York. This university fronts Washington 
Square. It would be highly interesting to notice, in 
passing, the services which this noble seat of learning has 
rendered the world. The Rev. John Hall, of New York, 
— a graduate of Belfast College, Ireland, — whose devotion 
to the cause of true learning and whose high Christian 
character may well remind one of the noblest virtues of 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 73 

the Puritans, — is the Chancellor of the university — a 
university which is still rendering the Empire State and 
the world inestimable service. May it long be blessed 
with prosperity ! 

Prof. Morse was enabled — especially living as he did in 
a university building — to make, in spare hours many ex- 
periments with his electric telegraph instruments. He 
was enabled to improve the system of telegraphic signs, 
and alphabet and sounds which his highly trained mind 
had devised. 

Prof. Morse, in a letter* in which he alluded to his 
going to the university, said : " There I immediately 
commenced, with very limited means, to experiment upon 
my invention." He then, after describing the apparatus 
which he employed in his experiments, continued : " With 
this apparatus, rude as it was, and completed before 
the first of the year 1836, I was enabled to and did 
mark down telegraphic intelligible signs, and to make 
and did make distinguishable sounds for telegraphing ; 
and having arrived at that point, I exhibited it to some 
of my friends early in that year, and among others to 
Prof. Leonard D. Gale who was a college professor of 
the University. * * * Up to the autumn of 1837 my 
telegraphic apparatus existed in so rude a form that I felt 
a reluctance to have it seen. My means were very limi- 
ted — so limited as to preclude the possibility of construct- 
ing an apparatus of such mechanical finish as to warrant 
my success in venturing upon its public exhibition. I 
had no wish to expose to ridicule the representative of so 
many hours of laborious thought." 

Not the least of the advantages which Morse as a Pro- 
fessor in the University of the City of New York enjoyed 
was that of the fellowship, to some extent, of men of 

* Ibid., p. 292. 



74 ^ STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

science. Prof. Gale became his confidential friend and 
partner. In 1837, Prof. Daubney of the University of 
Oxford, being on a visit to the United States, and some 
friends, including the learned Henry A. Tappan who was 
one of the faculty of the university, and at a later date 
President of the University of Michigan, were invited to 
see experiments on the telegraph. Among the students 
who were privileged to see the experiments was a Mr. 
Alfred Vail, who recognizing to some extent the value of 
the telegraph, induced his father and brother to advance 
funds with which to make experiments of such a nature 
as would make it impossible for the public not to recog- 
nize the value of the invention. He also became a part- 
ner of Prof. Morse's — a partnership which he had in after 
years reason to value in the highest degree and to return 
ardent thanks to the professor for the blessing which he 
had been instrumental in conferring upon him. 

In the meantime rumors having got abroad of the 
wonders which could be performed by telegraphy, Mr. 
Levi Woodbury, Secretary of the United States Treasury, 
issued a circular to naval officers and to men in certain 
departments of the civil service of the United States, and 
to others, to furnish him with reliable information respect- 
ing the services which the best telegraphic system which 
had as yet been devised in any part of the world might 
be made to render the Republic. To the circular which 
Prof. Morse received he replied in a long letter in which 
he unfolded the wonderful possibilities of the electric 
telegraph. Secretary Woodbury replied under date of 
Dec. 6th, 1837, that he was satisfied that the telegraph 
would be valuable to commerce as well as to the govern- 
ment. He added: "It might most properly be made 
appurtenant to the Post-Office Department ; and during 
war, would prove a most essential aid to the military 
operatic t;s of the country." 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 75 

Prof. Morse showed his invention to many scientists 
and was always attentive to any suggestions which they 
made. Thus, he may not only be said to have called to 
his aid whatever suggestions he might thus obtain, but to 
have also received the indorsement of so many men of 
science that a dignity surrounded his invention which 
necessarily commanded a consideration at the hands of 
the United States Government. For example, the Frank- 
lin Institute of Philadelphia — a learned Society which 
Franklin had helped to found — appointed a Committee 
to carefully examine the invention and to report to the 
Society its conclusions. One of them, Robert M. Patter- 
son had been a correspondent of Jefferson's, to whom the 
aged statesman had contributed some highly philosophic 
thoughts pointing out improvements of vast importance 
to civilized nations which might be made in the system 
of weights and measures in general use in the transactions 
of commerce. Patterson was the Professor of Natural 
Philosophy, of Chemistry, and of Mathematics in the 
University of Pennsylvania — a university which, as has 
been said, owed its origin to Franklin. At a later period 
he was one of the professors of the University of Virginia. 
He was also President of the American Philosophic So- 
ciety as well as a member of the Franklin Institute. An- 
other member of the Committee was Roswell Park, a 
professor in Natural Philosophy of the University of 
Pennsylvania. Prof. Walker of the Philadelphia High 
School, Isaiah Lukens who was a very able mechanician, 
and two other scientists connected with the United States 
mint, — one of them being at a later period at the head of 
the Department of Weights and Measures of the United 
States, — made a body of men whose conclusions might 
well command the attention of the most incredulous 
minds. This learned Committee reported to the Institute 
with high admiration that not only had electricity, by 



76 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

Morse's invention, been reduced to subserviency to man's 
wishes, but that the invention was capable of being made 
of such value to the Republic, that the National Govern- 
ment should advance the means with which to test its 
possibilities on a large scale. When Prof. Morse informed 
by letter one of his brothers of the action of the Franklin 
Institute his accomplished brother wrote back to him, 
saying : " Your invention, measuring it by the power 
which it will give man to accomplish his plans, is not only 
the greatest invention of the age, but the greatest inven- 
tion of any age. I see, as an almost immediate effect, 
that the surface of the earth will be net-worked with wire, 
and every wire will 'be a nerve, conveying to every part 
intelligence of what is doing in every other part. The 
earth will become a huge animal with ten million hands, 
and every hand a pen to record whatever the directing 
soul may dictate. No limit can be assigned to the value 
of the invention." Young Mr. Vail, Prof. Morse's former 
student who had become his partner, on hearing what the 
Franklin Institute had said about the telegraph though it 
was but in miniature form, wrote on March 19th, 1837, to 
him saying : " I feel. Professor Morse, that if I am ever 
worth anything, it will be wholly attributable to your 
kindness — I now should have no earthly prospect of hap- 
piness and domestic bliss had it not been for what you 
have done, which I shall ever remember with liveliest 
emotions of gratitude, whether it is eventually successful 
or not. I can appreciate your reasonable and appropriate 
remark that there is nothing certain in this life ; that it is 
a world of care, anxiety, and trouble, and that our depen- 
dence must be placed upon a higher power than of earth." * 
The high confidence reposed in Prof, Morse by the 
Franklin Institute, and the letters from distinguished 

*Ibid., p. 338. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. J"/ 

scientiests, helped to open the way for the inventor to 
bring the electric telegraph to the attention of the Federal 
Government. When he visited the national Capitol, the 
Congressional Committee of Commerce, to whom Con- 
gress, acting on an official communication of the Secretary 
of War, had referred the consideration of the electric 
telegraph, treated him with much consideration, placing 
the private room of the Committee at the disposal of the 
inventor. The President of the United States and the 
members of his Cabinet visited Morse to see a telegraph 
in operation. The Chairman of the Committee — Mr. J. 
O. F. Smith — reported favorably on the electric telegraph, 
and then in order to be enabled to do so honorably, ten- 
dered his resignation to Congress, and bought himself an 
interest in the patent and went with Morse to Europe to 
obtain patent-rights in the old world. In Europe 
Prof. Morse astonished even the Savants by the scientific 
and ingenious manner in which he applied electricity to 
the practical purposes of life. In the Academy of 
Sciences of France he was treated with high consideration. 
To the members of that distinguished society he showed 
his invention, receiving their criticisms and admiration. 
In Europe he met the learned and venerable Humboldt. 
This celebrated scientist had himself experimented with 
electricity and had published to the world the secret of 
the power exerted by a species of fish — that which is 
sometimes in modern times, called the electric eel. He 
had given a graphic account of the combats which are 
sometimes waged by the gyinnoti — or the so-called electric 
eel, — which reaches a size of five or six feet in length, — 
and the wild horses in the vicinity of the Colabozo, South 
Africa, — a combat in which the formidable denizen of the 
water would occasionally strike terror into the hearts of 
the horses and paralyze or kill the poor brutes. Morse 



78 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

also met at the same dinner table with Humboldt, the 
illustrious Arago who had also made valuable experiments 
with the mysterious forces of electricity. In a letter 
which Morse wrote from his sick-room at the unveiling of 
a statue of Humboldt he recalled his experience in the 
Academy of Sciences of France. He wrote : " I sat at a 
short distance from Baron Humboldt and I can never 
forget the feelings of encouragement, in those anxious 
moments, when, after the lucid explanation of my Tele- 
graph to the Academy by M. Arago, the Baron Humboldt 
arose, and, taking my hand, congratulated me and thanked 
me before them all." Morse then alluded to his last con- 
versation with Humboldt in which the venerable sage 
spoke with enthusiasm of American science and expatiated 
with warmth upon the scientific labors of Maury and 
Dana — characterizing one of Dana's books as one of the 
most valuable contributions to science of the age. It was 
natural that such a society as that of the Academy of 
Sciences of France should look with great gratification 
upon Morse's electric telegraph. Mr. Smith, Morse's 
partner, when thinking of how little the Government of 
the United States was doing in the meantime, in the 
matter of practically encouraging Morse, recalled a scene 
which had once taken place in the Academy of Sciences of 
France. On March 20th, 1800, Volta the philosopher, had 
explained to the Academy a discovery which he had made 
respecting electricity. When a committee announced the 
result of their examination of the discovery, Napoleon, 
who as President of the Academy was at the time pre- 
siding, at once arose from his chair, and moved to suspend 
the rules of the learned Society respecting the formalities 
it was accustomed to observe, and to at once confer a 
gold medal on the illustrious scientist. The proposition 
was carried by acclamation, and Napoleon on the same 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 79 

day presented the philosopher with two thousand crowns. 
It may here be added that Napoleon offered a prize of 
sixty thousand francs to any one who would make as 
valuable a discovery respecting electricity as had Franklin 
or Volta. Napoleon also provided for a yearly prize of 
three thousand francs for the best experiments with what 
is called the galvanic fluid. This is not the place to linger 
to give an account of the experience of the American in- 
ventor in Europe. In France the patent which he procured 
was practically worthless. The despotic government of the 
period was afraid to allow the people to employ an agent 
which might be useful to them in combining at a given 
instant against the government. A time was to come when 
Napoleon III. was to act in some respects in a highly gener- 
ous manner to Morse and was to unite with other govern- 
ments in making him a pecuniary returti for his invention, 
but in the meanwhile Prof. Morse was becoming poorer 
and poorer. When he finally, after making an arrange- 
ment with the Russian government which in time might 
be worth something to him, returned to America he found 
that during the years that he had been absent from his 
native land his government had given little or no atten- 
tion to the telegraph. 

Without pausing to dwell upon the professor's struggle 
with poverty, — or of the new testimonials which men of 
science presented to him respecting his invention, — or 
of the electrical experiments which Prof. Henry of Prince- 
ton College, — who in his department had perhaps no 
superior in the world, — made for Prof. Morse, it is inter- 
esting to note that Congress finally — amidst jeers in the 
House of Representatives — appropriated by a majority of 
but six votes, thirty thousand dollars to enable Prof. Morse 
to construct a telegraph on a scale which would prove to 
the world whether it was or was not of value to a great 



8b A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

nation. In the United States Senate the bill passed in 
silence as the clock was about striking midnight on the 
last night of a session. Prof. Morse was a man of deep 
Evangelical convictions. He had sat in the gallery of 
Congress when his invention, had been treated with 
derision. From the Senate chamber he had retired on 
Feb. 24th, 1842 — the last day of the session — as night 
was settling on the Capitol of the United States. A 
Senator had informed him that between one and two 
hundred measures would have to be passed upon before 
the appropriation for a telegraph could be taken up and 
that it was impossible for the Senate to act upon an electric 
telegraph bill. Sad-hearted and with only twenty-five 
cents in his pocket — without money with which to return 
to New York, — Morse retired to enjoy a tranquil slumber. 
He firmly believe*! that a Divine providence would not 
forsake him. 

There has been a temptation felt on the part of some of 
Morse's biographers to consider the pleasantly affecting 
manner in which the news of what had been done for him 
in the Senate just before midnight, was conveyed to him 
by a young lady, as being romantic. The truth is, how- 
ever, that the young lady was very young and the 
daughter of an old college friend at whose house he was a 
guest — a friend who was the United States Commissioner 
of Patents and who had labored among his friends in the 
Senate while Morse was asleep and had had the pleasure 
of seeing the bill to give the telegraph a trial, pass just as 
the Senate was about being dissolved. His daughter 
Miss Ellsworth, was doubtless a kind-hearted girl who 
broke the news to the professor in a peculiarly kind 
manner and it was fitting that Prof. Morse should give to 
the world a proof of the beautiful friendship which ex- 
isted between himself and Miss Ellsworth by engaging 



A' STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 8 1 

that she should be the first one to send a message on the 
telegraph when it should be formally tested in the 
presence of the world. In due time President Polk, who 
was a graduate of the University of North Carolina, 
signed the bill which was to appropriate thirty thousand 
dollars to enable Prof. Morse to ultimately prove to the 
world not only that man could instantaneously correspond 
with his fellows though separated by fifty or one hundred 
miles, but that he could in a fraction of a second corre- 
spond with friends who might be living in the most 
distant tropics or in either of the hemispheres. 

Well it was that the Government of the United States 
had not longer delayed to give due attention to the 
electric telegraph. To a friend Prof. Morse wrote : 
" My personal funds were reduced to a fraction of a 
dollar, and, had the passage of the bill failed from any 
cause, there would have been little prospect for another 
attempt on my part to introduce to the world my new 
invention." With energy Prof. Morse set to work to 
connect by telegraph Baltimore and the national capital. 
He made many experiments with electricity on a scale 
which had before been beyond his means to make. On 
Aug. loth, 1843, 1''^ wrote to John C. Spencer, Secretary 
of the Treasury, that he had proved the truth of a law of 
electricity which was destined to be of the grandest con- 
sequence in telegraphy. After describing his experiments 
he informed the Secretary of War that his experiments 
had been performed in the presence of Professors Ren- 
wick, Draper, Ellet and Schaeffer and his assistants Pro- 
fessors Fisher and Gale ; and that Professors Silliman, 
Henry, Torrey and Dr. Chilton would have been pres- 
ent had they not been detained by their ofificial duties. 
He added : " The practical inference from this law is, 
that a telegraphic communication on the Electric Mag- 



82 ^A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

netic plan may with certainty be established ACROSS 
THE Atlantic Ocean ! " Prof. Morse further added : 
" Startling as this may now seem, I am confident the 
time will come when this project will be realized." The 
Secretary of War replied that he was gratified with the 
results of his experiments and that he trusted that the 
country would have reason to be satisfied with his labors. 
In the meanwhile the heaviest trial in some respects which 
Prof. Morse had yet had to bear settled upon him. He 
had intended to cover the telegraph wires with a coating 
of lead and to lay them under ground all the way from 
Washington to Baltimore. After spending in so doing 
about twenty-three thousand dollars of the government 
appropriation of thirty thousand dollars he had made the 
startling and at first very sad discovery that the electric 
current would not take kindly to his arrangement for 
underground wires. His friends about him feared that his 
mind and strength would give way. Years before he had 
suggested to Secretary Woodbury a plan for using posts 
to support the wires. He decided to try such a plan, but 
he had to encounter the difficulty of doing so in a way 
which would keep captive the electric current until it had 
performed his bidding. The professor had to decide upon 
a practicable plan by which the wires when they touched the 
posts would be insulated. Two plans were suggested to 
him, one, by Alfred Vail, and the other by Mr. Ezra 
Cornell — who afterwards founded the University which is 
called by his name and is now one of the wealthiest uni- 
versities in the great State of New York. Mr. Cornell 
was a man of energy and of remarkable business and 
practical intelligence. He had studied at a public school 
and had at one time of his life been a school teacher. He 
had acquired habits of thought which were to be very 
useful to Mr. Morse. Mr. Cornell, who was engaged by 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 83 

Morse to help him in various ways, showed remarkable 
intelligence. He also privately studied about electricity 
in the Congressional library. The plan for insulating the 
wires with the aid of glass where they were supported by 
poles did not receive the preference by Prof. Morse, over 
the plan suggested by Mr. Vail. The sorely tried profes- 
sor gave directions that expensive measures which the 
new plan demanded should be taken. Happily at this 
critical juncture Morse visited Prof. Henry of Princeton 
College. Prof. Henry showed him that he had made a 
mistake in adopting the plan for insulating the wires 
which he had decided to adopt, and that the mistake must 
end in disaster as had his first plan of covering the wires 
with lead and earth — but that if he would adopt the one 
of the two plans which he had rejected he would be en- 
abled to accomplish his purpose. Prof. Morse returned to 
his work, countermanded the expensive measures which 
he had decided to apply to the wires, and adopted the 
plan endorsed by Prof. Henry. Sad indeed it would 
have been for Morse had he been obliged to spend on 
costly experiments so much money as not to have 
enough left with which to complete his telegraph between 
Washington and Baltimore. 

On May 24th, 1844, under circumstances peculiarly 
e.xciting and agreeable, the telegraph was formally opened. 
Miss Ellsworth was called upon to send to Prof. Morse 
the first message. She knew that he was imbued with 
the faith of the Puritans and that through all the trials 
through which he had passed he had looked for the sup- 
port and the blessing of the Almighty. With great deli- 
cacy she selected a part of a verse from the Bible to flash 
over the wire to her friend. Her message was: "What 
has God wrought?" A member of Congress named 
Seymour, who was afterwards Governor of Connecticut, 



84 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

at once claimed the slip of paper on which the first mes- 
sage was received, on the ground that Miss Ellsworth 
was a native of Hartford, The mystic paper was depos- 
ited in the Hartford Museum or Athenaeum, where it is 
still preserved. It is not necessary to here dwell upon 
the services rendered to the people of the United States 
by the first telegraph line built in America. Congress 
soon after its completion passed a second appropriation to 
keep it in operation. If about this period one could 
have been permitted to look into Miss Ellsworth's diary 
he would have seen in it a little poem in Prof. Morse's 
handwriting. The words read : 

TO MISS A. G. E. 

THE SUN-DIAL. 

,' Horas non numero nisi serenas. 

" I note not the hours except they be bright." 

The sun when it shines in a clear cloudless sky 
Marks the time on my disk in figures of light. 

If clouds gather o'er me unheeded they fly, 
" I note not the hours except they be bright." 

So when I review all the scenes that have past 
Between me and thee, be they dark, be they light, 

I forget what was dark, the light I hold fast, 
" I note not the hours except they be bright." 

Washington, March, 1845, Samuel F. B. Morse. 

In Prof. Morse's character there were many features 
which were highly praiseworthy. There was one idea 
which he long cherished and would not sacrifice until 
compelled to do so by a hasty act of a Congress which 
was strangely-long incredulous respecting the value of 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 85 

his wonderful invention. Prof. Morse believed that in a 
republic the telegraph should form part of a postal sys- 
tem. It would be instructive to here dwell upon the 
danger to which the liberties of a people are exposed by 
monopolies. In the daily business of life the merchant 
could perhaps be ruined by having rivals in trade favored 
in transmitting intelligence. Circumstances might arise 
in which a telegraph or railroad company might ignore 
the interests of a community — isolating it even from the 
rest of the world until it reduced it to abject submission 
to its will. In a well-ordered government a civil service 
wisely organized by law, could attend to certain interests 
of the people in a way which is perhaps little imagined 
by ordinary citizens. So many evils had Jefferson known 
to occur in Europe from the power wielded by secular 
and religious corporations — even travelling when in the 
old world in lands in which one fourth or much more of 
all the real estate was exempt from taxation on the 
ground that it was owned by a Romish ecclesiastical cor- 
poration — by which arrangement the poor were obliged 
directly or indirectly to pay not only their own taxes but 
also the taxes of this corporation, — and in various ways 
to be to a great extent controlled and impoverished by 
legislation which enriched corporations by placing the 
people at their mercy ; — that he, when the Constitution 
of the United States was about being adopted, expressed 
the opinion in one or more of his letters that a provision 
should be inserted in the Constitution of the Republic 
by which the people would be protected from the evils 
flowing from the existence of monopolies. Morse was 
unwilling to sell to private parties the invention of the 
electric telegraph until the United States Government 
had considered the propriety of accepting the invention 
at a price trifling compared with its real value to the 



86 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

United States. Morse's proposition to add the telegraph 
to the United States postal system was referred by Con- 
gress to the Postmaster General the Hon. Cave Johnson. 
This gentleman did not at once realize the wonderful 
value of a well-developed telegraph system to a nation. 
In his Report to Congress he said : " Although the inven- 
tion is an agent vastly superior to any other ever devised 
by the genius of man. * * * yet the operation of the 
telegraph between this city [Washington] and Baltimore 
has not satisfied me that under any rate of postage that 
can be adopted, its revenues can be made to cover its 
expenditures." On receiving this report Congress de- 
clined the valuable offer made by Morse to give it a finer 
postal service than had ever been adopted by any nation. 
The postal service of the United States has a far higher 
mission to perform than merely to raise a revenue by 
means of postage stamps. The great truth that the 
postal system of the United States by promoting the 
circulation of knowledge and by enabling people to com- 
municate with each other on innumerable subjects pro- 
motes the dissemination of knowledge no less truly than 
do institutions of valuable learning in the land, is not, it is 
to be feared, as widely realized as it should be even to this 
day. Thus Morse was compelled to become interested 
with private companies and soon, one might almost say, 
a princely income commenced to flow to him. 

This is not the place to dwell upon the honors which 
were conferred upon Prof. Morse by learned societies and 
by many governments. It is doubtful whether any 
American scientist had ever before received as many 
medals and honors of various kinds as were bestowed 
upon the inventor of the electric telegraph. It would be 
highly interesting and would still further illustrate the 
connection which exists between the services rendered by 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 87 

the sciences taught, and the breadth of mind encouraged, 
by institutions of a high grade of learning, should one 
point out the part acted by the energetic Cyrus W. Field 
and Prof. Morse, in uniting the hemispheres by telegraph 
— a work the grandeur of which may well impress one's 
mind more and more, as one attempts to realize it in its 
true greatness. 

It was a happy moment in the life of Prof. Morse when 
in 1859, to an assembly in the University of New York — 
at which were present the Prince of Wales, who was visit- 
ing the United States, and the Duke of Newcastle, — he 
made an address in the course of which he thus spoke: 
" The infant Telegraph, born and nursed within these 
walls, had scarcely attained a feeble existence, ere it 
essayed to make its voice heard on the other side of the 
Atlantic. I carried it to Paris in 1838. It attracted the 
warm interest not only of the Continental philosophers, 
but also of the intelligent and appreciative among the 
eminent nobles of Britain, then on a visit to the French capi- 
tal. Foremost among these was the late Marquis of North- 
ampton, then President of the Royal Society, the late dis- 
tinguished Earl of Elgin, and in a marked degree the noble 
Earl of Lincoln. The last named nobleman in a special 
manner, gave it his favor ; he comprehended its important 
future, and, in the midst of the skepticism that clouded 
its cradle, he risked his character for sound judgment in 
venturing to stand godfather to the friendless child. He 
took it under his roof in London, invited the statesmen 
and the philosophers of Britain to see it, and urged for- 
ward with kind words and generous attentions those who 
had the infant in charge. It is with no ordinary feelings, 
therefore, that after the lapse of twenty years I have the 
singular honor this morning of greeting with hearty wel- 
come, in such presence, before such an assemblage, and 



88 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

in the cradle of the Telegraph, this noble Earl of Lincoln, 
in the person of the present Duke of Newcastle." * 

Of all the many titles and honors which were showered 
upon Prof. Morse there was perhaps none which gave him 
greater pleasure than did the title of LL.D. conferred 
upon him by Yale College. To President Day of Yale 
College, who had been one of his college professors and 
had on Aug. 27th, 1846, communicated to him the action 
of the college, Morse wrote : " Permit me to return, 
through you, my sincere thanks to the honorable corpora- 
tion for the high honor they have conferred upon me at 
the last commencement, in bestowing upon me the degree 
of Doctor of Laws. I esteem it doubly valuable as ema- 
nating from my much-loved and venerated alma mater. In 
the success with which it has pleased God to crown my 
telegraphic invention, it is not the least gratifying cir- 
cumstance that you consider the invention as reflecting 
credit on my collegiate instruction, and I may therefore 
say that, in reviewing the mental processes by which I 
arrived at the final result, I can distinctly trace them back 
to their incipiency, in the lessons of my esteemed instruc- 
tors in natural philosophy and in chemistry. Later 
developments in electro-magnetism in the lectures of 
Prof. J. F. Dana were, indeed, the more immediate 
sources whence I drew much of my material, but this was 
dependent for its efificacy on my earlier college instruction. 
Be pleased to accept my sincere thanks for the flattering 
and friendly manner in which you have communicated to 
me the act of the corporation. In common with all the 
friends of learning, I sincerely deplore the necessity, which 
you conceive to exist, of your resignation of the Presi- 
dency of the college over whose interests you have so 

* " Life of S. F. B. Morse." By S. I. Prime, pp. 392-3. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 89 

long watched. May the blessing of God accompany you 
in your retirement ! " 

Not only by inventing an electric telegraph did Morse 
endeavor to serve his country. His literary labors were 
very interesting. As professor in the University of New 
York his lectures to the students have been regarded as 
"models of graceful rhetoric and elaborate argument." 
He published many papers in periodicals on various sub- 
jects. There was one subject to which he gave special 
study and endeavored to bring to the attention of Ameri- 
can citizens. When in Rome and in some other parts of 
Europe he had seen a vast amount of illiteracy, supersti- 
tion and deep degradation, which he believed was caused 
by the teachings of Roman Catholicism. He had been 
led by knowledge which he had acquired in Europe to 
firmly believe that the form of government of the vast 
Italian corporation ruled by the Pope and Cardinals — the 
Popes having for hundreds of years been Italians and so 
arranged affairs that a vast majority of the Cardinals, who 
elect the Pope, should be Italians, — was in the worst 
sense of the word despotic and opposed to the teachings 
of the Bible, and that it looked with especial hatred upon 
liberty in Church and State in America, — and that it had 
decided to war against the public schools and institutions 
of higher learning in the United States and to employ 
whatever talent it could command to prejudice, — by 
arguments sometimes so subtle that they would not always 
be recognized as emanating from priestcraft,— the people 
of America against the principles of government held 
sacred by Washington and Jefferson and their col- 
leagues, — principles of the greatest value to the most 
important interests of useful learning and of civil and 
religious liberty. Thus believing he wrote a great many 
valuable papers on Romanism — papers which were calcu- 



90 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

lated to set right any one who had wavered in judgment 
respecting the value of free institutions to American 
citizens. Many of these instructive contributions to the 
press were ultimately edited in book-form, under the title 
of " Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the 
United States : revised and corrected, with Notes by the 
Author," This volume passed through numerous edi- 
tions. In the year 1837, ^^ edited, and published with 
an introduction by himself, a book entitled: "Confes- 
sions of a French Catholic Priest, to which are added 
Warnings to the People of the United States, by the 
same Author," On the title-page Morse put a sentence 
which he had heard from the lips of Lafayette — a sen- 
tence which, when its authenticity was questioned, he 
proved to be true by producing the written testimony of 
living witnesses in whose presence Lafayette had made 
the remark. The sentence read : " American liberty can 
be destroyed only by the Popish clergy." — " Lafayette," In 
1 84 1, Morse published a volume of papers which he had 
first given to the world through a daily paper, entitled : 
"Our Liberties defended ; the Question discussed ; is the 
Protestant or Papal System most favorable to Civil and 
Religious Liberty?" Another book which he published 
was entitled : " Imminent Dangers to the Free Institu- 
tions of the United States through Foreign Immigration, 
and the Present State of the Naturalization Laws. By 
an American." He also published other learned papers 
to which attention need not here be particularly drawn. 
Morse also introduced into the United States the wonder- 
ful method of taking pictures by the aid of the sun 
and subtle chemical combinations. He may be said to 
have taken the first photographic picture ever taken in 
America. He and his distinguished colleague in the 
University of the City of New York, Prof. John William 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 9I 

Draper, realized that while Daguerre's marvellous inven- 
tion of photogenic drawing could give pictures of statu- 
ary and architectural objects it could not be applied to 
landscape scenery or used in a satisfactory manner in 
taking portraits. Prof. Draper conducted a series of 
very learned and highly interesting experiments in the 
laboratory of the university and succeeded in vastly im- 
proving the already wonderful invention. The wonders 
wrought by photography and its inestimable value to the 
astronomer and its value in many ways to the civilized 
nations would open an interesting subject for contempla- 
tion. In recent times electricity is often employed in 
photography. Photographic pictures of the interior of 
mines and of caverns as well as of landscapes and of innumer- 
able objects often in modern times in an instant speak to 
one in a way which surpass the powers of the most elo- 
quent orator or the most labored pages of the most ele- 
gant author. 

Prof. Morse was a member of the Presbyterian Church 
and was a man of decided religious convictions. He gave 
liberally of his means to charities. To a grandson he 
wrote in 1868: "The nearer I approach to the end of my 
pilgrimage, the clearer is the evidence of the Divine ori- 
gin of the Bible, the grandeur and sublimity of God's 
remedy for fallen man are more appreciated, and the 
future is illumined with hope and joy." In the same 
year he wrote to his brother: "The Saviour daily seems 
more precious; his love, his atonement, his divine power, 
are themes which occupy my mind in the wakeful hours of 
the night, and change the time of 'watching for the morn- 
ing ' from irksomeness to joyful communion with him." 

The last public act of the inventor of the electric tele- 
graph was to be present, although eighty years had com- 
bined to make his head snowy white, at the unveiling of 



92 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

a statue to Franklin. He ended an address by saying 
of Franklin : " May his illustrious example of devotion 
to the interest of universal humanity be the seed of 
further fruit for the good of the world ! " 

On April 2d, 1872 Prof, Morse's spirit was summoned 
into the presence of its Creator. This is not the place to 
dwell upon the high honors paid to the illustrious dead. 
It may be stated that his imposing obsequies caused sad- 
ness not only in the great city of New York. The Legis- 
latures of Massachusetts and of New York paid him 
especial honor. His death was held to be a national 
bereavement. On April i6th, both Houses of Congress, 
the President of the United States and his Cabinet, the 
Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States and 
the Governors of the different States assembled in the 
national Capitol. After James G. Blaine, who was assisted 
by the Vice-President of the United States and presided 
at the impressive scene, had made an address he was fol- 
lowed by other speakers whose words deepened the 
solemnities of the day. A large portrait of the great 
inventor of the telegraph, which occupied a place in the 
legislative hall of the Republic, brought to the minds of 
the great assembly of statesmen the figure of Prof. 
Morse. Around the painting were written the words, 
" What hath God wrought ? " Telegrams of sympathy 
during the impressive services were received from many 
parts of the world and were read aloud by Mr. Cyrus 
W. Field. After the service had been opened by prayer. 
Speaker Blaine said : " Less than thirty years ago, a man 
of genius and learning was an earnest petitioner before 
Congress for a small pecuniary aid, that enabled him to 
test certain occult theories of science which he had labori- 
ously evolved. To-night the representatives of fifty mil- 
lion people assemble in their legislative hall to do homage 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 93 

and honor to the name of ' Morse.' Great discoverers 
and inventors rarely Hve to witness the full develop- 
ment and perfection of their mighty conceptions, but to 
him whose death we now mourn, and whose fame we 
celebrate, it was in God's good providence vouchsafed 
otherwise. The little thread of wire placed as a timid 
experiment between the national capital and neighboring 
city grew and lengthened, and multiplied with almost 
the rapidity of the electric current that darted along its 
iron nerves, until, within his own lifetime, continent was 
bound unto continent, hemisphere answered through 
ocean's depths unto hemisphere, and an encircled globe 
flashed forth his eulogy in the unmatched elements of a 
grand achievement." When Blaine ceased speaking he 
announced the names of eminent statesmen who were to 
take part in the solemn memorial service. James A. Gar- 
field, when his name had been announced, impressively 
said : " The grave has just closed over the mortal remains 
of one whose name will be forever associated with a 
series of achievements in the domain of discovery and in- 
vention the most wonderful our race has ever known, — 
wonderful in the results accomplished, more wonderful 
still in the agencies employed, most wonderful in the 
scientific revelations which preceded and accompanied 
their development." As Garfield approached the close 
of his remarks, he spoke of electricity as " that chainless 
'spirit which fills the immensity of space with its invisible 
presence, — which dwells in the blaze of the sun, follows 
the path of the farthest star, and courses the depths of 
earth and sea, — That mighty spirit," he added, '' has at 
last yielded to the human will. It has entered a body 
prepared for its dwelling. It has found a voice through 
which it speaks to the human ear. It has taken its place 
as the humble servant of man, and through all coming 



94 ^ STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

time its work will be associated with the name and fame 
of Samuel F. B. Morse. * * * The future of this great 
achievement can be measured by no known standards. 
Morse gave us the instrument and the alphabet. The 
world is only beginning to spell out the lesson, whose 
meaning the future will read." 

One might ask what truths would Garfield have had the 
world learn from such an invention as that given to the 
world by Prof. Morse ? He would have had statesmen 
observe the wisdom of nations cherishing the interests of 
the arts and sciences. But a very short time before taking 
part in paying the last sad honors to Prof. Morse, he had in 
Congress urged with eloquence the wisdom of the United 
States Government extending aid to the cause of educa- 
tion throughout the Republic — especially in some of the 
States of which a majority of the voters could not read 
and write. When speaking at the service in memory of 
Prof. Morse, Garfield justly exclaimed : " The electro- 
magnetic telegraph is the embodiment — I might say the 
incarnation — of many centuries of thought — of many 
generations of effort to elicit from Nature one of her 
deepest mysteries. No one man, no one country, could 
have achieved it. It is the child of the human race, — ' the 
heir of all the ages.' How wonderful were the steps 
which led to its creation ! " Garfield then proceeded to 
review with high eloquence the steps which had ushered 
into the world the discoveries respecting electricity until, 
as he expressed it, " the work of the inventor began." 
He mentioned by name the illustrious scientists whose 
philosophic experiments had made it possible to apply 
electricity to telegraphy. Almost every one — if not in- 
deed every one — of the great men whose names he men- 
tioned, had made the acquaintance of science in State 
institutions of higher learning, — and a goodly number of 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 95 

the men whose names he named had been themselves 
university professors. 

It is interesting to here notice that while Morse was 
laboring in the United States to give to the world an 
electric telegraph a somewhat similar effort was being 
made in Europe. A student at the University of Heidel- 
berg had seen an experiment performed by one of his 
German professors which had suggested to him a kind of 
electric telegraph. He and Prof. Wheatstone had 
formed a partnership and had invented an electric tele- 
graph, which, though much inferior to Prof. Morse's 
invention, deserves honorable mention. Even if they 
had never adopted any of Prof. Morse's ideas their in- 
vention would doubtless have subserved some useful 
purposes. 

It would be instructive to dwell on many of the highly 
interesting applications of electricity to some of the arts 
and sciences. By Prof. Graham Bell's invention of 
the telephone — an invention which has been improved by 
Prof. A. E. Dolbear, — articulate speech can be trans- 
mitted for even hundreds of miles, so that one can have 
whispered into his ear the low notes of good-will and 
affection in the familiar tones of his most cherished 
friend, — can literally converse with distant dear ones. 
Suffice it, however, to conclude these remarks about elec- 
tricity by saying that if Yale College, which has given to 
the world hundreds of useful men, had never educated 
any other youth than Morse she would have returned to 
Connecticut more than all the money which that State 
has ever expended on her high schools and on Yale 
College. 

It would be interesting to dwell upon the money value 
of useful inventions to nations. Even the incidental ways 
in which the members of a community are benefited by 



96 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

the electric telegraph and by photography, is worthy of 
the consideration of the student of social science. For 
example, classes of workmen receive employment in 
making magnetic telegraph instruments and in manufac- 
turing from ore wire ; another class of people are em- 
ployed as telegraph operators, or as photographers. In 
this latter class of citizens are to be found, in some 
instances, women. In the present stage of civilization 
the thoughtful statesman may well view with concern the 
condition of many of the gentler sex who are thrown 
upon their own exertions for support. In a selfish world 
they have often sadly few ways of earning for themselves 
an honorable subsistence. In at least some instances 
women are employed as telegraph operators, or assume, 
without compromising a single womanly feeling, the 
beautiful and appropriate avocation of taking photo- 
graphs. Suppose that one hundred thousand men and 
women are employed as telegraph operators receiving for 
their work, on an average, five hundred dollars a year, 
fifty millions of dollars are thus yearly divided among an 
estimable class of citizens. Surely the poor have an inci- 
dental, no less truly than a direct interest, in nations 
cherishing the interests of the arts and sciences ! 

To place a just money value on inventions which pro- 
mote the happiness and comfort of communities — even 
sometimes save life, — would be almost, or quite, impos- 
sible. Yet approximations, valuable to the student of 
social well-being, can justly be made. John Marshall, — 
the second Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, — once calculated that the cotton-gin, in- 
vented by Eli Whitney — a young man who after studying 
in the public schools of Connecticut, graduated in Yale 
College, became a school teacher, and died in the year 
1825, — had saved the United States, five hundred millions 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 97 

of dollars. George Sewall Boutwell, who as a financier and 
statesman, occupies an honorable place in American his- 
tory, computed the value to the United States of Whit- 
ney's invention up to about the year 1859, ^^ ^"^ thousand 
millions of dollars. Should this calculation be extended 
to the year 1880, the figures would become so immense 
as to make it difficult for one to appreciate their vastness. 
A basis on which to estimate the value of such an inven- 
tion as the cotton-gin can be afforded in part, in the 
following manner. When Whitney, in 1792, after gradu- 
ating at Yale College went to Georgia it took an ordinary 
slave about one day to clean up a pound of green-seed 
cotton. Whitney was happy in enjoying the acquaint- 
ance of the gifted widow of Gen. Greene — one of the most 
distinguished generals of the war for Independence. She, 
having urged him and encouraged him in the kindly 
manner which is one of the charms of the gentler sex, to 
endeavor to invent some contrivance for freeing the 
fleecy material from its undesired attendants, he invented 
a machine which would do many hundreds of times as 
much work as could the most skilful fingers of any human 
being. In the year 1880 there were at least several times 
as many millions of bales of cotton produced in the 
United States as there were pounds before Whitney's 
invention enriched the world. 

When science creates new and useful industries she 
deserves to be credited by the thoughtful citizen with 
the wealth which she thus bestows upon the human race. 
For example, in recent years petroleum, or rock oil, has 
been made valuable to mankind by the achievements of 
scientists and of ingenious inventors. This singular oil 
had been known and looked upon with wonder by the 
ancient Egyptians and by the Assyrians. Even Herodo- 
tus, Pliny and Dioscorides were interested enough in its 
4 



98 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

mysterious appearance to allude to it in their writings. 
It was to be found in ancient times, as it is to be found 
to-day, in Italy, on the borders of the Caspian Sea, on the 
slopes of the Caucasus in Burmah, and from the Atlantic 
coast of the American continent to the Pacific Ocean. 
Even the mariner might have seen it as it bubbled up in 
the ocean in sight of the crater of Vesuvius, or as it 
glistened on the waters off the coast of what is now 
known as Venezuela and Southern California. Some of 
the American Indians were acquainted with some of its 
mysterious properties. In the night, rendered more 
sombre by the shadow of over-hanging trees, the Indians 
have been known to gather on the banks of a stream 
whose bosom was covered with oil. They would, when 
about to engage in war, mix with the oil a paint and 
anoint their dusky bodies or triumphantly shout as they 
illumined the dark stream by setting fire to the oil which 
floated on its waters. For a long period even American 
citizens were to see rivers of oil going to waste, content 
with occasionally bottling a little of it as medicine. 

In 1855, the learned Benjamin Silliman, Jr., who after 
graduating in Yale College became one of its professors 
and added to the lustre already shed upon the name of 
Silliman by his distinguished father, was engaged by 
Messrs. Eveleth and Bissell of New York, to scientifically 
examine rock oil. Prof. Silliman produced, as the result 
of his scientific experiments, a paper in which he pointed 
out the value of petroleum to the arts and the mode 
of treatment to which the crude oil should be sub- 
jected to make it yield results useful to man. Not, how- 
ever, until the year 1859, ^i^ people awake, even to a 
limited degree, to a realization of the vastness of the 
mineral wealth which science had just revealed to the 
world. When in the year 1859, oil wells commenced to 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 99 

yield princely fortunes to their owners, a scene of wild 
excitement was enacted in Pennsylvania. Thousands of 
people rushed to fields and hills in whose depths were 
subterranean rivers of wealth. Villages were called into 
existence one might almost say instantaneously. Men 
got rich suddenly and often parted with their newly 
acquired gold as though it had been a plaything. In 
time, however, the excitement subsided and a new, yet 
an immense, industry recovered from its intoxication. 
The invention of lamps suited to the use of the new kind 
of oil gave a great impetus to the petroleum industry. 
The first patent for lamps was made in 1859 ^"d during 
that year some forty inventions for lamps and patent 
burners and for appliances in general for using oil, were 
patented. In i860, although the mutterings of the 
approaching storm of civil war much occupied the minds 
of thoughtful people, seventy-one such inventions were 
made. In 1861, fifty three new patents were granted at 
Washington, and in 1862 one hundred and one patents 
were issued to facilitate the employment of petroleum in 
lamps. Each succeeding year increased the number of 
inventions by which the refined oil is made useful to the 
human race. To speak of the valuable inventions which 
have been made for transporting petroleum great dis- 
tances, and the innumerable ways in which the refined oil, 
• — or kerosene as it is called, — and of the way in which 
the products that remain when the oil is refined, are 
applied to the arts, would be to write a chapter which 
might well excite the interest of the student of political 
economy. In twenty years' time the petroleum industry 
became a source of vast wealth to the United States. 
Many thousands of men have been enabled to support 
their families by the means which have flowed to them 
through the newly opened industry, Pennsylvania alone 



lOO A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

received up to the year 1879, — to say nothing of what it 
and different parts of the United States, have received 
since 1879, ^"^^ t° ^^7 nothing of the lowness of the price 
at which it at times sold vast quantities of oil, — $293,872,- 
162. Up to 1879, ^t least $488,079,842 worth of oil was 
exported from the United States to different parts of the 
world — to say nothing of the value of the oil used in the 
United States. But these figures represent but a small 
part of the benefit received by mankind from the service 
rendered by scientists and by inventors in making petro- 
leum useful to the nations of the earth. The art of 
refining petroleum has been introduced from the United 
States into different lands. One may almost say that 
wherever mercantile enterprise can make itself felt there 
kerosene is apt to be found. Light has been brought to 
millions of people who had once to spend their evenings 
in partial, if not in complete, darkness. — Thus the hours of 
day have been lengthened to many households. The old, 
often unprofitable and dreary, winter evenings of many 
homes, have become hours of happy recreation or of 
study and improvement. Many bold whalers whose ships 
were wont to vex every sea and to dare even the perils of 
the Arctic regions, have been, in a measure, relieved from 
their arduous toil, and the persecuted yet inoffensive 
whale has been left in some degree in peace. The substi- 
tution of the light of kerosene for the ancient pine-knot 
or tallow dip is one of the many revolutions which science 
has been instrumental in bringing about in recent years. 
The wealth which petroleum since it was touched by the 
hand of science has given to the United States, was all 
the more valuable, coming as it did when the Republic 
was impoverished by civil war. 

It would be interesting to dwell upon what science has 
done in the last century in metallurgy : — to show, for 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 10 1 

example, how the manufacture of iron — a metal of price- 
less value to mankind — has been wonderfully aided by 
the chemist, and how even the iron age — interesting as it 
is in the history of civilization — is giving way to a steel 
age, and how by a chemical discovery steel rails are 
made which endure more than thirty times the wear and 
tear that iron rails can bear, thus enabling the locomotive 
to travel with a safety and speed and with an economy 
scarcely to be hoped for in times when rails were made of 
iron ; — and how ships by being built of steel are made 
lighter, stronger and in various ways safer in case of col- 
lision as well as capable of carrying a greater amount of 
freight than the finest ships of their size of iron. Let it 
suffice, however, to say that if science has cost nations 
something for her maintenance she has returned to all 
who have cherished her many times that cost even in 
money. 

Many of the services rendered by men whose minds 
have been broadened in centres of learning have more 
than a money value. Wonderful discoveries in medicine 
have bedn made by which the ravages of desolating 
epidemics are stayed and by which literally many millions 
of lives have been saved. Every new discovery of such a 
nature, has a value which is interesting alike to all the 
citizens of a land. In every country there is an amount 
of preventable sickness that is very costly to the public. 
This sickness, much of which could be prevented by 
sanitary science, was estimated by Chadwick in 1842 
to amount even in England alone to i^ 14,000,000 sterling 
per annum — not to speak of indirect losses. In England, 
France and Germany it is calculated that in 1880 the 
people on an average lived, six years longer than they 
did fifty years earlier.* 

* " The Progress of the World," by M. G. Mulhall, F.S.S., 1880, p. 3. 



102 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

The science of navigation is deeply indebted to the 
universities of a past age. The astronomer — as for ex- 
ample Prof. Galileo, — who scanned through the telescope 
— an instrument which has a very interesting history — 
the star-lit depths of space and penetrated some of the 
secrets of the immeasurable abysses of the heavens, gath- 
ered material for making a mystic guide-book and for 
converting the moon and stars into lighthouses, by which 
the mariner is to-day enabled to make his way across the 
trackless waste of waters. By his subtle calculations the 
astronomer has made discoveries which affect every op- 
eration of trade in which the navigator has a part to 
perform. If Columbus, as is claimed by many of his 
biographers — including a member of his own family — 
studied in the University of Pavia, the fact is interesting 
inasmuch as that university was celebrated for the atten- 
tion given in it to the science of navigation. It was a 
university that might well prepare a youth to render the 
world a priceless service. The discovery of the American 
continent was not merely valuable to the old world be- 
cause of its precious metals. Its agricultural 'products 
alone — including plants new to Europeans — was an in- 
valuable blessing to the old world. Even the quinine 
tree, valuable as it is in medicine, is probably vastly less 
valuable to Europeans than is the American potato — a 
vegetable which in innumerable cases has banished the 
sad sickness known as scurvy from the habitations of the 
poor. The potato is found to yield thirty times in weight 
to the acre as much as does wheat. Next to wheat it 
may be said to rank as a food product in the world. It 
is in short the bread of very many millions of people. 

It has already been noticed that Jefferson believed that 
one of the greatest blessings which institutions of a high 
grade of learning render nations is that of educating youth 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 103 

to become statesmen. A few statistics may here illustrate 
in some faint degree the indebtedness of ihe United States 
to high schools and colleges for legislative wisdom. At 
the annual commencement of the somewhat unknown 
University of North Carolina in 1855, it was found that 
among its alumni gathered together, there were six Gov- 
ernors. It was found that among the alumni of the 
institution had been a President and a Vice-President 
of the United States, a Secretary of the Navy, a Minister 
to France, a Treasurer and a Comptroller of the State, 
two of the three Supreme, and six of the seven Superior 
Court Judges, the Attorney General, and nearly a fourth 
of the members of the General Assembly of the State of 
North Carolina. Up to about the year 1884, among the 
graduates of Princeton have been at least one President 
of the United States, two Vice-Presidents, one Chief- 
Justice, four Associate Justices, five Secretaries of State, 
four Secretaries of the Navy, five Attorney Generals, 
more than one hundred and twenty Judges of the State 
courts, more than one hundred and fifty Members of Con- 
gress and twenty foreign Ambassadors. It has already 
been noticed that of the fifty-five statesmen who at one 
of the most critical periods of American history, were 
charged with the momentous work of framing a Constitu- 
tion for the United States, at least nine of them had 
studied in Princeton College. Probably the history of 
very many other seats of learning in the old world and in 
'America would illustrate, more forcibly than have the sta- 
tistics which have just been presented, the silent influence 
which institutions of a high grade of learning exert upon 
communities and upon the world. It has been estimated 
that at least about one fourth of all the members of Con- 
gress, during the first one hundred years of the Republic's 
history were once college students. 



104 ^ STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

Colleges, as has been seen, do not merely educate men 
to be statesmen. They give to the world engineers, 
authors, lawyers, physicians, chemists, and men with 
faculties so trained that they are prepared to cast light 
upon various questions of deepest interest to the human 
race. Many of these men are better qualified to serve 
the communities in which they reside than it would have 
been possible for them to be had there been no generous 
provision made for their mental culture. Of all the ser- 
vices which institutions of a high grade of learning have 
rendered the world there is none more interesting and 
important than the blessing which they have rendered by 
qualifying men to examine and appreciate the claims of 
the Christian religion and to put a just value upon the 
pretensions and superstitions of false religions. One 
may well observe with ever increasing interest, how 
large is the number of the ministers of Evangelical 
Christianity who have studied and taught in universities. 
Among these men, to whom in the Divine providence 
the world owes the deepest gratitute, might be men- 
tioned Wickliff, who translated the Bible into English ; 
the martyrs John Huss and Jerome of Prague ; Luther, 
who did a work in Germany, which the more it is 
examined the grander and more important to mankind 
it is found to be ; Calvin who as a Reformer successfully 
contended for many of the great truths of Christianity ;• 
and a host of learned ministers of the Gospel whose 
eloquence has been consecrated to one of the most 

.important objects which can enlist the affections of 
noble souls. 

One of the many incidental advantages which a uni- 

^versity renders a State which has a school system similar 
to the one which Jefferson labored to secure in Virginia, 
is that it helps to maintain, or to raise, the standard of 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 105 

study in the common schools and in the high schools or 
colleges. A youth realizing that one of the rewards 
which he will obtain by being faithful in his studies, is 
the privilege of entering the grammar school and of 
ultimately entering the university, has a reward for 
faithfulness in his employment set before him which 
encourages him in the happiest manner to cheerfully and 
earnestly endeavor to attain at least a certain standard of 
excellence in all his studies. 

Although Jefferson had never seen many of the great 
scientific inventions which are of priceless value to civil- 
ized nations, — had never seen a locomotive, or heard of. 
employing electricity as an agent to bear messages under 
the ocean or around the world in an instant, yet the 
venerable statesman had seen science accomplish many 
wonders. In the able paper which he sent to the 
Legislature of Virginia in August, 1818, respecting a suit- 
able site for a University in Virginia, he, after alluding to 
rewards which a commonwealth may be expected to reap 
from such an institution, continues : " The commissioners 
are happy in considering the statute under which they 
are assembled as proof that the Legislature is far from 
the abandonment of objects so interesting. They are 
sensible that the advantages of well-directed education, 
moral, political and economical, are truly above estimate. 
Education generates habits of application, of order and 
the love of virtue ; and controls, by the force of habit, 
any innate obliquities in our moral organization. We 
should be far, too, from the persuasion that man is fixed, 
by the law of his nature, at a given point ; that his im- 
provement is a chimera, and the hope delusive of render- 
ing himself wiser, happier or better than our forefathers 
were. As well might it be urged that the wild and un- 
cultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit 



I06 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

only, can never be made to yield better ; yet we know 
that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage 
stock, producing what is most estimable both in kind and 
in degree. Education, in like manner, ingrafts a new man 
on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was 
vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social 
worth. And it cannot be but that each generation suc- 
ceeding to the knowledge acquired by all those that 
preceded it, adding to it their own acquisitions and dis- 
coveries, and handing the mass down for successive and 
constant accumulation, must advance the knowledge and 
well-being of mankind, not infinitely, as some have said, 
but indefinitely, and to a term which no one can fix and 
foresee. Indeed, we need look back half a century, to 
times which many now living remember well, and see the 
wonderful advances in the sciences and arts which have 
been made within that period. Some of these have 
rendered the elements themselves subservient to the 
purposes of man, have harnessed them to the yoke of his 
labors, and effected the great blessings of moderating his 
own, of accomplishing what was beyond his feeble force, 
and extending the comforts of life to a much enlarged 
circle, who had before known its necessaries only. That 
these are not the vain dreams of sanguine hope, we have 
before our eyes real and living examples. What, but 
education, has advanced us beyond the condition of our 
indigenous neighbors? And what chains them to their 
present state of barbarism and wretchedness, but a 
bigoted veneration for the supposed superlative wisdom 
of their fathers, and the preposterous idea that to look 
backward for better things, and not forward, as it should 
seem, to return to the days of eating acorns and roots, 
rather than indulge the degeneracies of civilization ? And 
how much more encouraging to the achievements of 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. ICJ 

science and improvement is this than the desponding 
view that the condition of man cannot be ameliorated, 
that what has been must ever be, and that to secure 
ourselves where we are, we must tread, with awful rever- 
ence, in the footsteps of our fathers. This doctrine is 
the genuine fruit of the alliance between Church and State ; 
the tenants of which, finding themselves but two well in 
their present condition, oppose all advances which might 
unmask their usurpations, and monopolies of honors, 
wealth and power, and fear every change, as endangering 
the comforts which they now hold. Nor must we omit to 
m.ention among the benefits of education, the incalculable 
advantage of training up able counsellors to administer 
the affairs of our country in all its departments, legislative, 
executive and judiciary, and to bear their proper share in 
the councils of our national government ; nothing more 
than education advancing the prosperity, the power and 
the happiness of "a nation.* In this same paper, Jefferson 
said: " Some good men, and even of respectable informa- 
tion, consider the learned sciences as useless acquirements ; 
some think that they do not better the condition of man ; 
and others that education, like private and individual 
concerns, should be left to private individual effort ; 
not reflecting that an establishment embracing all the 
sciences which may be useful and even necessary in the 
various vocations of life, with the buildings and apparatus 
belonging to each, is far beyond the reach of individual 
means, and must either derive existence from public 
patronage, or not exist at all. This would leave us, then, 
without those callings which depend on education, or 
send us to other countries to seek the instruction they 
require." 

* " Early History of the University of Virginia," J. W. Randolph, Rich- 
mond, 1856, pp. 432-7, 



I08 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

Without pausing to dwell upon all the arguments which 
Jefferson, from time to time, incidentally urged respecting 
the value of colleges and of universities to the United 
States, it may be well to somewhat briefly notice that if 
colleges were not public, the rich could indeed send their 
youth to whatever fanes of knowledge they pleased, no 
matter how expensive it was to do so, but youth in mod- 
erate circumstances in life would, to a great extent, be 
excluded from such halls of learning. If the rich alone 
should enjoy the advantages of a collegiate education 
they might, to too great an extent, become practically an 
aristocracy. The statesmen who framed the Constitution 
of the United States provided that titles of nobility should 
not be given to any citizen of the Republic. At the close 
of the war for Independence the officers who had taken part 
in the war formed themselves into an organization which 
they named " The Cincinnati." They had medals struck 
for the members of the Society. The decorations were 
perhaps especially prized by the foreign of^cers who had 
taken part in the war. Washington laboriously, and with 
great earnestness, exerted his influence to cause the Soci- 
ety to dissolve, or, at least, to provide that under no cir- 
cumstances should it be permitted to contain a germ 
which might develop into an Order of nobility. Wash- 
ington conferred again and again with Jefferson regarding 
this Order. I will here present an extract from a letter 
which Jefferson wrote to Washington from Paris on Nov. 
14th, 1786. Jefferson thus spoke of the Society of the 
Cincinnati : " What has heretofore passed between us on 
this institution, makes it my duty to mention to you, that 
I have never heard a person in Europe, learned or un- 
learned, express his thoughts on this institution, who did 
not consider it as dishonorable and destructive to our 
governments ; and that every writing which has come out 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 1 09 

since my arrival here, in which it is mentioned, considers 
it, even as now reformed, as the germ whose development 
is one day to destroy the fabric we have reared. I did 
not apprehend this, while I had American ideas only. 
But I confess that what I have seen in Europe has 
brought me over to that opinion ; and that though the day 
may be at some distance, beyond the reach of our lives 
perhaps, yet it will certainly come, when a single fibre left 
of this institution will produce an hereditary aristocracy, 
which will change the form of our governments from the 
best to the worst in the world. To know the mass of evil 
which flows from this fatal source, a person must be in 
France; he must see the finest soil, the finest climate, 
the most compact State, the most benevolent character of 
people, and every earthly advantage combined, insuffi- 
cient to prevent this scourge from rendering existence a 
curse to twenty-four out of twenty-five parts of the inhabi- 
tants of this country. With us, the branches of this insti- 
tution cover all the States. The Southern ones, at this 
time, are aristocratic in their dispositions ; and, that that 
spirit should grow and extend itself, is within the natural 
order of things. I do not flatter myself with the immor- 
tality of our governments, but I shall think little of their 
longevity unless this germ of destruction is taken out." 
It is pleasant to be able to state that this Society which 
Washington, and Jefferson looked upon with misgiving, 
finally dissolved and gave the money which it had ac- 
quired, amounting to a good many thousands of dollars, 
to a college that had been named after Washington — a 
college to which Washington himself had given a hand- 
some donation. Some of the evils connected with the 
existence of an aristocracy are the following. The 
aristocracy control the Government. Laws are too often 
enacted which, however favorable to the aristocracy, are 



no A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

injurious to the interests of the common people. For 
example, the nobles in France before the Revolution, 
managed to enact laws by which the property of nobles 
could not be taxed. The common people were thus 
obliged not only to pay their own taxes but the taxes of 
the nobles as well. The nobles invested themselves with 
peculiar honors. For instance no one could be an officer 
in the army who was not a noble of a certain grade. 
The history of every nation teaches that, under certain 
circumstances which may arise, an aristocracy is capable 
of enacting laws which may effect the destruction of the 
happiness, of the liberties, and even of the lives of the 
common people — may even be tempted to endeavor to 
reduce their fellow-citizens to a state of vassalage — may 
even be betrayed into thinking of themselves as a superior 
species and into assuming offensive pretensions. The his- 
tory of every nation in the world teaches that, no matter 
how lovely in character some members of an aristocracy 
may be, the existence of an order of nobility in a land 
is responsible for direful evils, — is an infringement on 
human liberty and a greater evil than benefit even to the 
favored few: — ris a system which can justly claim no en- 
couragement from the spirit of the Christian religion and 
is at war with just principles of good government. 

In a nation in which all men are equal the people enjoy 
the advantage of the talents of the poor as well as of the 
rich. When the people of the United States declared to 
the world, as they did when they adopted their National 
Constitution, that no order of nobility should exist under 
the United States flag, they presented a strange spectacle 
to the nations of the world who had become accustomed 
to seeing the innumerable evils which ever result from 
creating wrong artificial distinctions among men. A 
Government " of the people, by the people, for the 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. Ill 

people,"* was indeed, a hundred years ago, an interesting 
sight to the world. 

In a very able and eloquent discourse, delivered in 
Chautauqua county, New York, July 26tli, 1837, on the 
importance of raising the standard of education through- 
out the land, William H. Seward said : " The aristocracy 
with which the world has been scourged was never one 
that was produced by science and learning. * * * If at 
this day, wealth sometimes usurps the place of intellect 
and appropriates its honors, it is only because public 
sentiment is perverted, and requires to be corrected by a 
higher standard of education. But, although education 
increases the power and influence of its votaries, it has no 
tendency like other means of power to confine its advan- 
tages to a small number ; on the contrary, it is expansive 
and thus tends to produce equality, not by levelling all to 
the condition of the base, but by elevating all to the asso- 
ciation of the wise and good." 

Seward's sentiments regarding creating, in some re- 
spects, an equality among citizens are certainly noble and 
wise. Is it not so plain as scarcely to need illustration, 
that if halls of learning are ever open to the sons and 
daughters of all American citizens, that youth will have 
opportunities to qualify themselves to guard their own 
interests, the cause of learning, of liberty, and of good 
government, in their country; but, that if institutions of 
learning are closed to the youth of parents in moderate 
circumstances, no matter how talented and noble they 
may be, and opened only to the rich, that the State would 
deprive itself of the advantages of the wisdom and services 
of a class of people from whom have arisen a host of 
patriots who have been one of the glories of the nation. 

* Abraham Lincoln's speech at the dedication of the Cemetery at 
Gettysburg. 



112 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

In a republic there cannot be a surplus of wisdom and 
true learning. The prosperity and strength of a State 
depend more upon having intelligent and virtuous citizens 
than it does upon possessing valuable mines of gold and 
silver. If only the rich were privileged to send their 
youth to colleges then, inasmuch as riches are confined 
principally to chief cities, there would sadly often be a 
dearth of highly educated men in small towns and vil- 
lages and in rural districts. The successful working of a 
republican government requires that there should be few 
districts devoid of high intelligence. Free colleges and 
universities disseminate over a State men of culture who 
directly or indirectly help in guarding the important 
interests of the commonwealth and in diffusing knowl- 
edge. It is a mistake to suppose that the only ones bene- 
fited by free institutions of learning are those who 
attend them. The good physician who ministers to the 
sick and blesses his neighbors in their hours of severest 
need and suffering, or by advice on sanitary matters saves 
a community from an epidemic, is not the only one who 
is blessed by the university. The engineer who builds 
bridges and works of invaluable utility to generations 
repays to the State many times the cost of his instruction 
in the public shrine of learning. The lawyer who main- 
tains the dignity of law without which savagery would 
characterize a community — without which the widow and 
the orphan would in many cases have no protector, — helps 
to distribute to others than himself the blessings of 
-higher education. Can a more unjust objection to high 
schools, academies and colleges be conceived than that 
their benefits are monopolized by those who study within 
their walls? These monuments of learning in which the 
lamp of knowledge is kept trimmed and burning give 
light to minds which in their turn diffuse intelligence, and 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. II3 

blessings flowing from knowledge, in all parts of the 
Republic. Why should the blessings of knowledge be 
curtailed by being confined only to the sons of wealthy 
families? Would the intelligent and patriotic poor be 
pleased at having these institutions of liberal culture 
closed to their youth ? Let the fountains of learning be 
ever free to the children of citizens in moderate circum- 
stances who are to be a blessing, it may be, to the nation 
no less truly than are the children of parents blessed with 
wealth. All honor to the many noble-hearted people of 
wealth who have shown themselves friends of letters and 
of the human race by giving of their means and time to 
found and maintain the cause of learning on the earth ! 
What would science have done without this class of 
friends ! 

When Jefferson was in Europe he had observed with a 
statesman's eye the condition of its people. Writing 
from France to his distinguished friend and former 
instructor, George Wythe on April 13th, 1786,* he spoke 
feelingly of the "ignorance, superstition, poverty, and 
oppression of body and mind, in every form " which he 
declared was firmly settled on the mass of the people." 
He then, from the condition of the countries of Europe, 
derived a warning for the people of the United State§. 
He said : "I think by far the most important bill in our 
whole code, [Code for Virginia] is that for the diffusion of 
knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation 
can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and hap- 
piness. If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or priests 
are good conservators of the public happiness, send him 
here. It is the best school in the universe to cure him of that 
folly. He will see here, with his own eyes, that these 

* " Memoirs and Writings of Jefferson," edited by Thomas Jefferson Ran- 
dolph, vol. ii., p. 43. 



114 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy against 
the happiness of the mass of the people. The omnipo- 
tence of their effect cannot be better proved, than in this 
country, particularly, where, notwithstanding the finest 
soil upon earth, the finest climate under heaven, and a 
people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable 
character of which the human form is susceptible ; where 
such a people, I say, surrounded by so many blessings 
from nature, are loaded with misery, by kings, nobles, and 
priests, and by them alone. Preach, my Dear Sir, a crusade 
against ignorance ; establish and improve the law for 
educating the common people. Let our countrymen 
know, that the people alone can protect us against these 
evils, and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose 
is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid 
to kings, priests and nobles, who will rise up among us 
if we leave the people in ignorance." 

Jefferson believed that strong-minded, well informed, 
and moral men were needed in a republic. He believed, 
as can be seen by the " Bill for the Better Diffusion of 
Knowledge " which he introduced into the Assembly of 
Virginia in 1779, that in all classes of citizens worthy and 
virtuous youth were to be found who could be fitted by 
education, to, as he expressed it, " guard the sacred deposit 
of the rights and liberties of their fellow-citizens." * He 
added : " It is better that such should be sought for and 
educated at the common expence of all, than that the hap- 
piness of all should be confided to the weak and wicked." 

* ' ' And to avail the Commonwealth of those talents and virtues which 
nature has sown as liberally among the poor as rich, and which are lost to 
their country by the want of means for their cultivation. Be it further en- 
acted as follows," etc., etc. The heading of a division respecting grammar 
schools or colleges, in a very lengthy bill which Jefferson in his old age, 
framed. See "Early History of the University of Virginia," J. W. Ran- 
dolph, Richmond, Va., p. 426. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. II5 

He then in his bill made especial provision by which this 
class of youth should be enabled to receive collegiate and 
university instruction. 

While dwelling for a moment on the interest which 
citizens in moderate circumstances in life — indeed, all 
lovers of libert)'' — should have in supporting public insti- 
tutions of learning it may here be interesting to supple- 
ment the remarks by Jefferson which have just been 
quoted, by noticing the views of James Madison and of 
William H. Seward on the wisdom of the people of a 
republic providing high grades of instruction for their 
youth. Madison's public declarations, when, as President 
of the United States, he repeatedly recommended to 
Congress the erection of a national university, and his 
sentiments on the value of colleges and universities to 
nations, as expressed in the reports of the University of ^ 
Virginia in his of^cial connection with its management, 
need not here be repeated. A letter of his dated Aug. 
4th, 1822, to W. T. Barry, may here however be noticed. 
After briefly acknowledging a letter and circular which he 
had received, he said : 

" The liberal appropriations made by the Legislature of 
Kentucky for a general system of education cannot be too 
much applauded. A popular Government, without popu- ^ 
lar information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a pro- 
logue to a farce or a tragedy ; or, perhaps, both. Knowl- 
edge will forever govern ignorance ; and a people who 
mean to be their own governors must arm themselves 
with the power which knowledge gives. 

** I have always felt a more than ordinary interest in 
the destinies of Kentucky. Among her earliest settlers 
were some of my particular friends and neighbors. And 
I was myself among the foremost advocates for submit- 
ting to the will of the ' District ' the question and the 



Il6 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

time of its becoming a separate member of the American 
family. Its rapid growth and signal prosperity in this 
character have afforded me much pleasure; which is not 
a little enhanced by the enlightened patriotism which is 
now providing for the State a plan of education embra- 
cing every class of citizens, and every grade and department 
of knowledge. No error is more certain than the one 
proceeding from a hasty and superficial view of the sub- 
ject : that the people at large have no interest in the 
establishment of academies, colleges, and universities, 
where a few only, and those not of the poorer classes, can 
obtain for their sons the advantages of superior education. 
It is thought to be unjust that all should be taxed for the 
benefit of a part, and that, too, the part least needing it, 

" If provision were not made at the same time for every 
part, the objection would be a natural one. But, besides 
the consideration, when the higher seminaries belong to a 
plan for general education, that it is better for the poorer 
classes to have the aid of the richer, by a generail tax on 
property, than that every parent should provide at his 
own expense for the education of his children, it is certain 
that every class is interested in establishments which 
[give] to the human mind its highest improvements, and 
to every country its truest and most durable celebrity. 

" Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with 
every free people. They throw that light over the public 
mind which is the best security against crafty and dan- 
gerous encroachments on the public liberty. They are 
the nurseries of skilful teachers for the schools distributed 
throughout the community. They are themselves schools 
for the particular talents required for some of the public 
trusts, on the able execution of which the welfare of the 
people depends. They multiply the educated individuals, 
from among whom the people may elect a due portion of 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. liy 

their public agents of every description ; more especially 
of those who are to frame the laws ; by the perspicuity, 
the consistency, and the stability, as well as by the just 
and equal spirit of which the great social purposes are to 
be answered. 

"Without such institutions, the more costly of which 
can scarcely be provided by individual means, none but 
the few whose wealth enables them to support their sons 
abroad can give them the fullest education ; and in pro- 
portion as this is done, the influence is monopolized which 
superior information everywhere possesses. At cheaper 
and nearer seats of learning, parents with slender incomes 
may place their sons in a course of education, putting them 
on a level with the sons of the richest. Whilst those who 
are without property, or with but little, must be peculiarly 
interested in a system which unites with the more learned 
institutions a provision for diffusing through the entire 
society the education needed for the common purposes of 
life. A system comprising the learned institutions may 
be still further recommended to the more indigent class 
of citizens by such an arrangement as was reported to the 
General Assembly of Virginia, in the year 1779, by a 
committee appointed to revise laws in order to adapt 
them to the genius of Republican Government. It made 
part of a ' Bill for the more general diffusion of knowl- 
edge,' that wherever a youth was ascertained to possess 
talents meriting an education which his parents could not 
afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense, 
from seminary to seminary, to the completion of his 
studies at the highest. 

" But why should it be necessary in this case to distin- 
guish the society into classes, according to their property? 
When it is considered that the establishment and endow- 
ment of academies, colleges, and universities, are a pro- 



Il8 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

vision, not merely for the existing generation, but for 
succeeding ones also ; that in Governments like ours, a 
constant rotation of property results from the free scope 
to industry, and from the laws of inheritance ; and when 
it is considered, moreover, how much of the exertions and 
privations of all are meant, not for themselves, but for 
their posterity, there can be little ground for objections 
from any class to plans of which every class must have its 
turn of benefits. The rich man, when contributing to a 
permanent plan for the education of the poor, ought to 
reflect that he is providing for that of his own descend- 
ants ; and the poor man, who concurs in a provision for 
those who are not poor, that at no distant day it may be 
enjoyed by descendants from himself. It does not require 
a long life to witness these vicissitudes of fortune. 

" It is among the happy peculiarities of our Union, 
that the States composing it derive from their relation to 
each other and to the whole a salutary emulation, without 
the enmity involved in competitions among States alien 
to each other. This emulation, we may perceive, is not 
without its influence in several important respects ; and in 
none ought it to be more felt than in the merit of diffus- 
ing the light and the advantages of public instruction. 
In the example, therefore, which Kentucky is presenting, 
she not only consults her own welfare, but is giving an 
impulse to any of her sisters who may be behind her in 
the noble career. 

" Throughout the civilized world nations are courting 
the praise of fostering science and the useful arts, and 
are opening their eyes to the principles and the blessings 
of Representative Government. The American people 
owe it to themselves, and to the cause of Free Govern- 
ment, to prove, by their establishments for the advance- 
ment and diffusion of knowledge, that their political 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 1 19 

institutions, which are attracting observation from every 
quarter, and are respected as models by the new-born 
States in our own Hemisphere, are as favorable to the 
intellectual and moral improvement of man as they are 
conformable to his individual and social rights. What 
spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable than 
that of liberty and learning, each leaning on the other for 
their mutual and surest support ? " 

As the aged Madison proceeded in his letter to his 
Kentucky friend, he spoke of the difficulties which Vir- 
ginia had encountered in the establishment of a satisfac- 
tory school system, and advised his friend to give atten- 
tion to the example set by the Eastern States which had 
less to contend with than had Virginia in the work of 
education. He ventured to suggest that in Kentucky 
the grade of instruction given to the poor might be 
raised by adding to reading, writing and arithmetic 
" some knowledge of geography ; such as can easily be 
conveyed by a globe and maps, and a concise geographi- 
cal grammar." He then continued: "And how easily 
and quickly might a general idea, even, be conveyed of 
the solar system, by the aid of a planatarium of the 
cheapest construction. No information seems better 
calculated to expand the mind and gratify curiosity than 
what would thus be imparted. This is especially the 
case with what relates to the globe we inhabit, the 
nations among which it is divided, and the characters 
and customs which distinguish them. An acquaintance 
with foreign countries in this mode has a kindred effect 
with that of seeing them as travellers, which never fails, 
in uncorrupted minds, to weaken local prejudices and 
enlarge the sphere of benevolent feelings. A knowledge 
of the globe and its various inhabitants, however slight, 
might, moreover, create a taste for books of travels and 



I20 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

voyages ; out of which might grow a general taste for 
history — an inexhaustible fund of entertainment and 
instruction. Any reading not of a vicious species must 
be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill 
up the leisure of the laboring classes." The venerable 
Madison then with a kind and graceful conclusion brought 
his letter to a close. 

On the i6th of February, 1829, when Madison lacked 
one month of being seventy-eight years of age, he wrote 
a note to Samuel S. Lewis, President of the " Washington 
College Parthenon " Association. In this note, while 
tendering his acknowledgments for the honorary mem- 
bership which had been conferred upon him, he took 
occasion to say that his " lengthened observations " made 
him " more and more sensible of the essential connection 
between a diffusion of knowledge and the success of 
Republican institutions." On September 6th, 1830, 
Madison wrote to Thomas W. Gilmer regarding the Uni- 
versity of Virginia and the primary schools of the State. 
He wished there to be " a sympathy between the incipient 
and the finishing establishments provided for public 
education." He spoke of " a satisfactory plan for pri- 
mary schools " as being " a vital desideratum in our Repub- 
lics." He spoke also of the difificulties which had to be 
encountered in establishing a satisfactory school system 
in the Southern States. The aged patriot declared that 
he " should be proud of sharing in the merit " of devising 
improvements that would make the common-school sys- 
tem of Virginia more effective. He wished every one 
associated with the University of Virginia " to take a 
warm interest in the primary schools." In this letter 
Madison spoke of his age and of his infirmities, and 
expressed his belief that the work to be done for the 
cause of education would be taken up by abler hands 
than his own. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 121 

William H. Seward, who as a statesman in some re- 
spects much resembled Jefferson, in a discourse on 
" Education," delivered in 1837, in Chatauqua county, 
New York, stated that : " It is obvious that there must 
always be various grades of education, and corresponding 
grades in the institutions in which it is obtained; and 
that all these will flourish only when all shall be duly 
maintained : " — that, "They must and will have a recipro- 
cal influence upon each other." 

One may well feel hesitation in presenting extracts 
from Seward's eloquent deliverances on the educational 
needs of the Republic when he reflects that only when the 
great New York statesman's discourse is seen in full, can 
justice be done to the eloquence of his language. He 
held that the standard of education in the common schools 
and in the academies and colleges of the State of New 
York should be raised. He thought that " an undue 
feeling of contentment and self-complacency," regarding 
the subject pervaded the community. He declared that 
citizens of the Republic ought " to possess a measure of 
knowledge, not only as great as is enjoyed by the citizens 
or subjects of other States, but at least as much superior 
as their power and responsibilities are greater." He held 
that youth were generally dismissed from school " at the 
very period when their education has only commenced." 
Seward, after sketching a high grade of instruction which 
seemed to him feasible to give to every youth in the 
United States, continued : " All this education at least 
must have been contemplated by the founders of this 
government. Do you think they regarded the scarcely 
more than mechanical acquirements of reading and writ- 
ing as constituting that standard of education which was 
to sustain this exquisitely organized, yet most liberal of all 
governments? No; I understand them rather as requir- 
ing, that the people could well comprehend and justly 



122 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

approve or condemn, all the measures of administration." 
Seward declared that " Great as the undertaking to 
establish such a standard of -education seems to be, it is 
inconsiderable, compared with what has already been 
accomplished. It is only about three hundred years since 
a Bible, now so cheap as to be found in the hands of the 
most humble of the race for whom it had been promul- 
gated more than fifteen hundred years, was obtained only 
by the tedious and laborious multiplication of manuscript 
copies, and was sold at a price that rendered it a sealed 
book to all but the affluent. Books of the bewil- 
dered sciences and arts, that had been obtained, were 
still more rare, and were more valuable than a thou- 
sand times their present cost. Even the ability to read 
and write was a qualification so rare, that it entitled its 
fortunate possessor to be the counsellor of kings, and to 
an exemption from the capital punishment adjudged 
against felony. If at that period some philanthropist had 
predicted that in the close of the eighteenth century, in a 
country then undiscovered, a race would exist among 
whom the Bible would be found in every family; and a 
greater number of books in a single city than the world 
then contained ; that all the population of a great empire 
would be able to read and write their native language ; 
that the boasted mysteries of all science then known to 
the few, who pursued their solitary studies in cloisters, 
would be revealed to all the world, with ten thousand 
discoveries never yet "dreamed of in their philosophy"; 
would not the prophecy have been thought more vision- 
ary than my present belief, that with the aid of earnest 
and wisely-directed effort, all the acquirements of aca- 
demical and collegiate education of Ihis day, may, within 
less than half a century, constitute the ordinary proficiency 
acquired in our (common) schools. * * * It is certain that, 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 1 23 

by means of persevering improvement in the system of 
instruction, the standard of knowledge that has obtained 
among us may be continually elevated. * * * Let us im- 
agine this whole people educated to the extent that I have 
supposed practicable ; and then can we conceive the im- 
mense and glorious change which would have come upon 
the condition of our country ! Then indeed would our 
puljlic councils be worthy the dignity of a race that has 
asserted and maintained their capability of self-govern- 
ment." Seward said that it was his belief that it was '' a 
measure quite as indispensable and of as great efficiency, 
to elevate the standard of our colleges and academies, and 
to increase the number of students received in them " as 
it was to care for " our common schools." 

It may here be incidentally noticed that Seward wrote 
quite a history of public education in the State of New 
York. The words of such thoughtful and learned states- 
men as Jefferson and Seward respecting the provision for 
the education of youth which should be made in a repub- 
lic, are interesting to the student of political economy — 
especially inasmuch as a certain class of people, prominent 
among whom are to be mentioned the Roman Catholic 
hierarchy, — especially Jesuits, — are endeavoring to per- 
suade, sadly often with success, American citizens to give 
up their public-school system, or to at least be satisfied 
with a low grade of public education. 

And now to return to Jefferson's labors in the cause of 
education in his native State. It was natural that one 
who wished as truly as he did a good educational system 
to be made " the key-stone of the arch of our Govern- 
ment," * should be deeply interested in the founding of 
the University of Virginia. He wished the organization 

* Jefferson's letter to Adams, Oct. 28th, 1813 (In " Memoirs of Jefferson," 
by Thomas Jefferson Randolph). 



-^ 



124 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

of the school system of Virginia to be so thorough that 
the common schools and the University could, as he 
expressed it in a letter to Gen. Breckenridge, dated Feb. 
15th, 1 82 1, "go on hand in hand forever." In this same 
letter he said : " Nobody can doubt my zeal for the 
general instruction of the people. * * * I never have pro- 
posed a sacrifice of the primary to the ultimate grade of 
instruction. Let us keep our eye steadily on the whole sys- 
tem." * To Joseph C. Cabell, Jefferson wrote on Jan. 1 3th, 
1823 : " Were it necessary to give up either the Primaries 
or the University I would rather abandon the last, because 
it is safer to have a whole people respectably enlightened, 
than a few in a high state of science, and the many in ig- 
norance. This last is the most dangerous state in which a 
nation can be. The nations and governments of Europe 
are so many proofs of it." f Writing to Cabell again on 
the following 28th of January he proposed to secure the 
necessary means with which to complete the university 
and then to push the interests of the common schools and 
to have provision made " systematically and proportion- 
ally," for " all the other intermediate academies." Under 
date of Jan. 22d, 1820, writing to Ca^ll, Jefferson had 
thus spoken : " Kentucky, our daughter, planted since 
Virginia was a distinguished State, has a University with 
fourteen professors and upwards of 200 students; while 
we, with a fund [the Literary Fund] of a million and a 
half of dollars, ready raised and appropriated, are higgling 
without the heart to let it go to its use. If our Legisla-. 
ture does not heartily push our University, we must send 
our children for education to Kentucky or Cambridge. * * * 
All the States but our own are sensible that knowledge is 

* Ibid. 

f " Early History of the University of Virginia," J. W. Randolph, Rich- 
mond, 1856, p. 267. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 1 25 

power. * * * The efforts now generally making through 
the States to advance their science, is for power ; while we 
are sinking into the barbarism of our Indian aborigines, and 
expect, like them, to oppose by ignorance the overwhelm- 
ing mass of light and science by which we shall be sur- 
rounded. It is a comfort that I am not to live to see 
this." In another letter to Cabell, under date of Dec. 
25th, 1820, Jefferson pointed out the fact that knowledge 
is power. " I lately saw in a newspaper," he said, " an 
estimate in square miles of the area of each of the States, 
of which the following is an extract : " Virginia 70,000 
square miles, Massachusetts 7,250, Connecticut 4,764, 
Delaware 2,120, Rhode Island 1,580." By this it appears 
that there are but three States smaller than Massachu- 
setts ; that she is the twenty-first only in the scale of size, 
and but one tenth of that of Virginia ; yet it is unquestion- 
able that she has more influence in our confederacy than 
any other State in it. Whence this ascendency ? From her 
attention to education, unquestionably. There can be no' 
stronger proof that knowledge is power, and that igno- 
rance is weakness. Quousque tandem will our Legislature 
be dead to this truth ? " 

Jefferson was aided in the great work of founding the 
University of Virginia by a number of friends of learning. 
For instance the learned Rev. John Rice of Virginia — a 
distinguished Presbyterian minister and the editor of a 
literary and religious periodical in Richmond — took up his 
gifted pen in behalf of the policy of founding the uni- 
versity. One of the points to which he drew attention 
was that Virginia was incurring pecuniary losses by not 
having suitable institutions of learning of her own. He 
charged her with being guilty of the "most culpable 
negligence " in the matter. He pointed out that instead 
of saving money by not having institutions of learning of 



126 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

her own and thus compelHng youth to go to other States 
for instruction, she gained less than she lost. He then 
dwelt upon one of the ways in which she lost by such a 
policy. He said : " This is no light matter. Ten years ago 
I made extensive enquiries on the subject, and ascertained 
to my conviction, that the amount of money annually 
carried from Virginia, for purposes of education alone, ex- 
ceeded $250,000. Since that period it has been greater. 
Take a quarter of a million as the average of the last eight 
and twenty years, and the amount is the enormous sum of 
$7,000,000. But had our schools been such as the 
resources of Virginia would have well allowed, and her 
honor and interest demanded, it is by no means extrava- 
gant to suppose, that the five States which bind on ours 
would have sent as many students to us as under the 
present wretched system we have sent to them. This, 
then, makes another amount of seven millions! Let our 
economists look to that. Fourteen millions of good dol- 
lars lost to us by our parsimony ! ! Let our wise men 
calculate the annual interest of_our losses, and add to this 
principal ! They will then see what are the fruits of this 
precious speculation. In the language of the craft, it may 
well be said 'Verily, it is a losing job.'"* In addition 
to the Rev. Mr. Rice's appeal for the university another 
gifted writer published an able paper respecting the uni- 
versity, which he signed "A Friend to Science." The 
author's real name was Joseph C. Cabell. He ended the 
article by paying an eloquent tribute to Jefferson. After 
dwelling upon the interest taken in public education by 
Jefferson, he said : " Where is the man with heart so cold 
as not to glow at the recital of views so generous and so 
exalted ? The name of this great and good man will 

* " Early History of the University of Virginia," J. W. Randolph, Rich- 
mond, Va., p. 157. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 12/ 

descend with his works to the latest times, and will be 
hailed with rapturous enthusiasm by the friends of liberty 
and learning in every quarter of the civilized globe." It 
may be doubted whether even the distinguished writer 
who signed himself a " Friend of Science " knew how de- 
votedly Jefferson had labored in the cause of education 
for nearly or quite half a century, 

Jefferson realized in some degree the grandeur of the 
work in which the people of the United States were 
engaged in establishing a Republic which should illustrate 
to the world the blessings of liberty and of self-govern- 
ment. He keenly realized that if the citizens of all parts 
of the United States did not cherish the cause of learning, 
the Republic, — notwithstanding its hopes of grandeur 
and of happiness, — would be exposed to humiliation, to 
disgrace, and in many respects to degradation. He would 
sometimes forecast with sadness the future of the United 
States. He could almost see, at times, the horizon grow- 
ing black with coming ruin and with the approach of 
desolating calamities. While he would indeed sometimes 
thank God that the evil day would not come in his gen- 
eration yet he did not give way altogether to hopeless, 
enervating fear. On the contrary, he would rally his 
energies and seek to help the youth of the land to become 
intelligent enough to successfully cope with the dangers 
which he saw that they might some day have to encounter. 
He felt that the life or death of the Republic depended 
upon whether or not she cherished the interests of learn- 
ing. It is told of a soldier who while the battle of Get- 
tysburg was in progress lay wounded on a height from 
which he could overlook the scene of battle. As the 
soldiers surged backwards and forwards the scene became 
to him grand and overwhelming. He felt that the destiny 
of the great Republic of the new world, hung trembling 



128 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

in the balance ! It was with somewhat similar feelings 
that Jefferson watched the efforts of ,the friends of edu- 
cation in Virginia, — and ^the opposition which they 
encountered, — as they endeavored to establish a good 
school system in the Commonwealth. As a statesman he 
not only believed that "well directed education improves 
the morals, enlarges the minds, enlightens the councils, 
instructs the industry, and advances the power, the pros- 
perity, and the happiness " * of a nation, — as nothing 
could do better f — but that "no other sure foundation 
can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happi- 
ness." \ He believed, as has been seen, not only that the 
sciences, " advance the arts, and administer to the health, 
the subsistence, and comforts of human life," § but /that 
the most important laws which were on the statute books 
of Virginia were her laws having in view the instruction 
in useful learning of her youth, and that the money she 
would expend in maintaining a good school system would 
be money well spent. He believed, as has been seen, 
" That the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not 
more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to 
kings, priests, and nobles, who will rise up among us, if 
we leave the people in ignorance." In short, Jefferson 
had noticed — and only those who have thoughtfully 
studied the history of nations can fully understand the 
force of his words, — that the history of every nation and 
of every age " teaches the awful lesson, that no nation is 
permitted to live in ignorance with impunity." 

* Report to Legislature of Virginia Jan. 6, 1818. — See "History of the 
University of Virginia as Contained in Letters of Jefferson and Cabell," 
pp. 402. f "Early History of the University of Virginia," p. 437. 

\ Letter to George Wythe, April 13, 1786. In " Memoirs and Writings 
of Jefferson." By Randolph. 

§ Report to Legislature of Virginia, Aug. ist, 1B18. — "Early History of 
the University of Virginia." J. W. Randolph, 1856, p. 435. 



A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 1 29 

It was with deep feeling that the aged Jefferson wrote, 
under date of Jan. 31st, 1821, to Cabell, who had written 
to him that he thought of retiring from the Assembly of 
Virginia : " But the gloomiest of all prospects is the 
desertion of the best friends of the institution, for deser- 
tion I must call it. I know not the necessities which 
may force this upon you. Gen. Coke, you say, will 
explain them to me ; but I cannot conceive them, nor 
persuade myself they are uncontrollable. I have ever 
hoped that yourself, Gen. Breckenridge, and Mr. Johnson 
would stand at your posts in the Legislature until every- 
thing was effected, and the institution opened. If it is 
so difficult to get along with all the energy and influence 
of our present colleagues in the legislature, how can we 
expect to proceed at all, reducing our moving power? 
I know well your devotion to your country and your 
foresight of the awful scenes coming, on her, sooner or 
later. With this foresight, what service can we ever ren- 
der her equal to this? What object of our lives can we 
propose so important ? What interest of our own which 
ought not to be postponed to this? Health, time, (labor,) 
on what in the single life which nature has given us, can 
these be better bestowed than on this immortal boon to 
our country ? The exertions and the mortifications are 
temporary; the benefit eternal. If any member of our 
college visitors could justifiably withdraw from this sacred 
duty, it would be myself, who qiiadragenis stipendiis jani- 
dudiiin peractis, have neither vigor of body nor mind left 
to keep the field; but I will die in the last ditch, and so 
I hope you will, my friend, as well as our firm-breasted 
brothers and colleagues, Mr. Johnson and Gen. Brecken- 
ridge. Nature will not give you a second life wherein 
to atone for the omissions of this. Pray then, dear, and 
very dear Sir, do not think of deserting us, but view the 
5 



130 A STATE SHOULD HAVE A UNIVERSITY. 

sacrifices which seem to stand in your way, as the lesser 
duties, and such as ought to be postponed to this, the 
greatest of all. Continue with us in these holy labors 
until, having seen their accomplishment, we may say with 
old Simeon, ' nunc dimittas, Domine.' " 

This pathetic exhortation of the aged statesman of 
Monticello to Cabell was not without effect. Gen. 
Dade,* in the Senate of Virginia in 1828, speaking of 
Joseph C. Cabell's connection with the University of 
Virginia, said : " In promoting that monument of wis- 
(^om and taste [he] was second only to the immortal 
Jefferson." 

* See " Life of Thomas Jefferson," by Henry S,, Randall, LL.D., p. 464. 



in. 

JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

The amount of thought and the self-sacrificing labor 
which JefTerson gave to the great work of breathing a 
noble spirit into the university which was to add new 
honors to the name of Virginia, was an eloquent proof of 
his conviction of the priceless worth of useful knowledge 
to citizens of a republic. 

What studies will be most useful in laying the founda- 
tion of the acquirements and habits of mind which will be 
most valuable to American citizens is a question worthy 
of far greater consideration by thoughtful parents and 
statesmen than, it is to be feared, it in many cases re- 
ceives The question becomes all the" more perplexing 
when one bears in mind how limited is the time that 
youth can attend educational institutions. 

When colleges and universities were first established in 
Europe they were adapted, as a rule, to a condition of 
society very different from that of the people of the 
United States in the nineteenth century. Jefferson lived 
in an age when great revolutions and changes convulsed 
the civilized world. He had seen empires and kingdoms 
rise and fall. He had seen States in the old world dis- 
membered, overran with armies and revolutionized in 
some degree, by various political causes. He had breathed 
an air which emboldened thoughtful men of learning to 
fearlessly review the errors and virtues of past gener- 

131 



132 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

ations. He felt that educational establishments in 
America might be modelled on a broader, a better, a 
much nobler basis than were some of the so-called 
seminaries of learning of the old world. He recognized 
the great truth that on some parts of the globe it may be 
wise to pursue various branches of learning unneeded in 
others. A time had been in Europe when if the uni- 
versities rendered the world invaluable service, they did so 
in spite of a certain spiritual and temporal despotism to 
which they were in many instances subjected — a despot- 
ism which dreaded the results which impartial historical 
and scientific investigation would lead to and looked 
with displeasure and with threats of persecution upon 
professors such as Galileo and some of his most learned 
associates, and which even insisted that if the Bible was 
studied at all it should be interpreted by many and often 
contradictory and unreliable writers — some of whom were 
styled " the Fathers," — rather than that the student 
should with a fearless and honest spirit seek untrammelled 
and unvexed with despotic rules, for truth. As a man of 
independent character Jefferson realized that the mis- 
chievous relics of the dark ages should not be allowed a 
place needed by the proper demands and improvements 
of a progressive age. He realized that new and vast 
regions of knowledge were being explored, and that 
discoveries were being made which were worthy of the 
regard of statesmen who were interested in the founding of 
good educational establishments, and that American citi- 
zens should be encouraged to attain higher and yet higher 
degrees of useful culture. He wished the great Republic 
of the new world to be enriched with tiyery blessing which 
the noblest gifts of useful learning could bestow upon her. 
William E. Gladstone — whose name may with all the 
more freedom be mentioned as he is justly held in singu- 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. • 133 

larly high esteem in America as well as in England and 
Europe — has declared that " The proper work of uni- 
versities, could they perform it, while they guard and 
cultivate all ancient truth, is to keep themselves in th' 
foremost ranks of modern discovery, to harmonize cc 
tinually the inherited with the acquired wealth of m? 
kind, and to give a charter to freedom of discussion, while 
they maintain the reasonable limits of the domain of 
tradition and of authority." * Jefferson could not but 
have agreed with much that the learned and eloquent 
Gladstone has said about great educational establish- 
ments. If he was as bold, or bolder, than the great 
English statesman in introducing improvements and in 
cherishing noble views respecting the grandeur of the 
mission of universities, he was yet very cautious and care- 
ful in the work of grouping together liberal and judicious 
courses of instruction in the new university which he was 
taking a prominent part in securing to his native State. 

Among the many questions which the Virginian states- 
man had to consider was, " How much time should be 
devoted by students to the study of Greek and Latin ? " 
It is a question upon which to this day distinguished 
statesmen and men of letters have expressed different 
opinions. Jefferson planned that students should have 
much^ liberty in choosing for themselves the courses of 
study which they should be led to believe would be most 
useful to them in after life. He would have a young man 
have, to at least a certain extent, an aim in life. He 
wished him to be helped by wisely arranged courses of 
instruction provided by the university, to form broad and 
intelligent views respecting useful learning and to a certain 
extent to anticipate right ambitions of a mature manhood. 

* " The Might and Mirth of Literature," by W. E. Gladstone, John De 
Roy, collector, p. 25. 



134 • JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

To certain departments of the temple of knowledge he 
would allow young men to enter without any knowledge of 
the Greek and Latin languages. While he did not expect 
young men having many different aims in life to engage 
in a common course of study he, for a numerous class of 
young men, considered an acquaintance with Greek and 
Latin to be of high importance. It is widely known that 
in modern times some thoughtful men have felt that in 
many American colleges an unwisely large proportion of 
time is given to the study of the dead languages. I was 
once pleasantly surprised to receive through a book-store 
which had printed a book entitled " Our National System 
of Education," which I had published in 1877, a kind note 
from James Abram Garfield and a couple of pamphlets 
which he had himself published. One of these pamphlets 
was an able address which he had delivered on " College 
Education " at Hiram College on June 14th, 1867. In 
this address, while he spoke in high terms of the value of 
an acquaintance with the cUsji^s and alluded to the pleas- 
ure with which he himself, as a professor, had taught 
them, he yet freely and strongly expressed the conviction,, 
that a larger proportion of time, as a rule, was given to 
classical studies in American colleges than was consistent 
with the highest wisdom. He pointed out some of the 
many branches of knowledge with which it is of very 
great importance that American youth should be ac- 
quainted, and spoke of the impossibility of their receiving 
due instruction in various very important branches of 
learning if they were compelled to give an unfair propor- 
tion of their time to dead languages. Garfield illustrated 
his address with very weighty proofs of the truth of the 
position which he maintained and declared that in Amer- 
ican colleges, the dead languages held a place, " in obedi- 
ence to the tyranny of custom," which was not defensi- 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 35 

ble. He declared further that " each new college is 
modelled after the older ones, and all the American col- 
leges have been patterned on an humble scale after the 
universities of England." Of course Garfield was careful 
to make evident that he did not mean that the study of 
Greek and Latin was not of very great usefulness to culti- 
vators of literature and especially to ministers of the 
Gospel. He meant, however, that so many useful studies 
had claims on the attention of youth that it was not wise 
to insist that half their time and more, up to manhood 
should be exclusively devoted to the study of the classics. 
He further pointed out that there were " a family of mod- 
ern languages almost equal in force and perfection to the 
classic tongues, and a modern literature, which, if less 
perfect than the ancient in aesthetic form, is immeasurably 
richer in truth, and is filled with the noblest and bravest 
thoughts of the world." He added that " When univer- 
sities were founded, modern science had not been born." 
He maintained that the place which classical studies bear 
to other learning should be readjusted. Garfield was 
careful to add, however, that " There are most weighty 
reasons why Latin and Greek should be retained as a part 
of a liberal education." He then made in behalf of these 
studies an eloquent and able plea. '^ These studies then," 
he continued, " should not be neglected : they should 
neither devour nor be devoured. I insist," he added, 
"■ they can be made more valuable, and at the same time 
less prominent, than they now are. A large part of the 
labor now bestowed upon them is not devoted to learning 
the genius and spirit of the language, but is more than 
wasted on pedantic trifles." Before presenting Jefferson's 
views on the wisdom of giving the classics an honorable 
place in the course of study of a certain class of youth, it 
may here be noticed that Mr. Charles Francis Adams Jr., 



136 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

and other able writers have expressed opinions respecting 
the value to youth of a knowledge of Greek and Latin 
which will be found to contrast in some respects with 
those which were ardently held by Jefferson. 

The value of an acquaintance with the dead languages 
when contrasted with much that it is desirable that 
American youth should know, has been attacked by wit. 
The Rev. J. D. Beugless, in a very interesting paper 
entitled, " What Our Universities should Teach," which 
was published in the July number of the entertaining 
and ably edited Overland Monthly, 1869, — a Californian 
magazine, — takes what may be called radical ground 
against youth devoting much time to the study of the 
classics. In his entertaining style, he writes : " Just here 
we recall an incident which aptly illustrates this whole 
controversy. Some years ago, in a time famous for 
steamboat racing on the Mississippi, two travellers, A 
and B, fell into a conversation. Said A to B : ' Have you 
ever studied Latin ? ' ' No, Sir,' was the reply. ' Then 
you have lost one fourth of your life, sir.' ' Did you 
ever study Greek ? ' ' No, sir.' ' There is another 
quarter of your life lost.' * But you have studied 
mathematics?' ' No, sir.' 'Another quarter' — In the 
midst of this last sentence the boiler burst. ' Have you 
ever learned to swim ? ' shouted B. ' No, no, sir, I 
have n't,' exclaimed A. ' Then there is all of your life 
lost,' rejoined B, and swam ashore." 

However highly Jefferson esteemed for a certain class 
of youth an acquaintance with Latin and Greek, he did so 
in a way in which Garfield would probably have agreed 
with him. The study of such languages as Hebrew, 
Greek and Latin give a certain discipline to the intellect 
and give a student a profounder comprehension, than peo- 
ple generally acquire, of the meaning of many English 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 37 

words. In this last respect an acquaintance with these 
languages may indirectly be of singular value to the 
statesman when called upon to frame enactments and to 
lawyers and judges when settling questions of law. It 
has been estimated that at least thirty per cent of the 
words in the English language are derived from Latin. 
Even to pure English roots of words Latin suffixes are 
found joined. In a thousand incidental ways an ac- 
quaintance with the classical languages may prove of 
very great value to the jurist and to the statesman. In 
a large library in which these words are being written is a 
department of law. In this division of the library are 
great volumes which are collections of the Bulls of the 
Popes in Latin. Some of these missives have made 
nations tremble. They have at times played a strange, 
sad part in history. They have given law to millions of 
those who have regarded with awe whatever issued from 
the lips of a Roman Pontiff. The titles of various na- 
tions to a large part of the continent of America have 
been based upon Papal missives. If Protestants have 
regarded as a superstition worthy of pity or contempt 
many of the claims of the Papacy not so have a vast 
number of people. The student of International law — 
indeed every statesman and citizen, — should know far 
more about these dusky volumes than is generally known. 
Then would they know how to act wisely in various con- 
troversies which are likely to occur wherever the hierarchy 
of the religion of Rome has power. One can but appre- 
hend that, as a rule, Ecclesiastical law is not taught in 
American law schools as its importance demands that it 
should be and as it is taught in some of the great univer- 
sities of Germany. The thoughtful American citizen and 
statesman who turns his gaze upon the conflict between 
Church and State, which has long raged and is still in ex- 



138 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

citing progress in Europe and in South America, will feel 
that it may at any moment be of the highest importance 
that the jurists and statesmen of every land which values 
civil liberty should be acquainted with the great principles 
involved in the issue. In Germany no one is allowed to 
be a lawyer who is unacquainted with Latin and has 
passed through a university. Indeed, in Germany one 
may often find students consulting in the original Latin 
the celebrated Institutes of Justinian, which have been 
for centuries the basis of the systems of jurisprudence in, 
one may say, many lands. It has been declared by the 
widely known scholar Dr. Max Miiller, — and Dr. Eliot, 
President of Harvard College agrees with the declaration, 
'- — that, " In Latin we have the key to Spanish, Portu- 
guese, French and Italian. Any one who desires to learn 
the modern Romance languages — Italian, Spanish and 
French — will find that he actually has to spend less time 
if he learns Latin first, than if he had studied each of the 
modern dialects separately and without this foreknowl- 
edge of the common parent." If, however, Dr. Miiller 
deems it just to thus speak of the Latin language, how 
shall one speak of the value of a knowledge of Greek, 
which language has been regarded as bearing, to at least 
some extent, the same relation to German that Latin 
does to some other languages? An intelligent Christian 
with even a limited acquaintance with the Greek' grammar 
may be helped much in obtaining an intelligent acquaint- 
ance with some of the expressions which he finds in the 
New Testament. Matters respecting questions of religion 
are so important that Christians may well gladly welcome 
knowledge which may help them to the better understand- 
ing what the Almighty has caused to be written for the 
instruction of his children. The Greek language has, inde- 
pendently of many other claims to consideration, that of 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 39 

being the speech in which the New Testament has been 
written. Even to a cultured heathen the Bible, as a book 
which exerts a vaster influence for good than any other 
book in the world, can but have a peculiar interest. 

The revival of the study of Greek and Hebrew — from 
which latter language English is indebted for many of its 
beautiful idioms, — marks a very important epoch in the 
history of the world. An historical incident may here be 
presented which has exerted a vast influence upon the 
human race and is intimately united with a series of 
mighty events of singular interest to the student of the 
history of civilization and to lovers of liberty. Just be- 
fore, and in the early part of the sixteenth century, in the 
shades of Oxford University, — an educational establish- 
ment already venerable with age, and worthy of world- 
wide honor, because of the statesmen, and the saintly 
Wickliff, — who has been called " The Morning Star of the 
Reformation," — whom it had given to the world, — might 
have been seen a group of highly cultivated professors, 
each one of whom would daily be a central figure around 
which would gather some scholars who were one day to 
leave the impress of their lives upon the history of civili- 
zation. In the group of great teachers might have been 
seen William Grocyn, Thomas Linacre, and Thomas Colet. 
Without pausing to describe each one of the learned men 
who shed lustre upon the great University of Oxford, — a 
home of learning which might be characterized as one of 
the most important of all the centres of intellectual ac- 
tivity in Great Britain, if not indeed of the world at that 
period, — it may here be stated that Thomas Colet was the 
eldest son of Sir Henry Colet, who was several times Lord 
Mayor of London. Sir Henry had had twenty-one chil- 
dren, all of whom had died except Thomas — who was one 
day to be called " the good Dean Colet." Thomas being 



I40 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

rich and longing to see the youth of London instructed, 
founded a school — which is still in existence — for one 
hundred and fifty-three young people, and endowed the 
establishment with what would be equal in modern times 
to about $150,000 to $200,000. In the instruction of its 
scholars he took a personal interest. It was, however, as 
one of the instructors, — and as the Dean — of the Univer- 
sity of Oxford that he was to accomplish much of the 
noblest work of his life. Among the students who listened 
at times to Colet's instructive lectures was Sir Thomas 
More who was to give to the world his singularly able 
work entitled " Utopia," — a book in which he was to 
describe an ideal Republic with such eloquence and ability 
that it was to exert for centuries a singularly wide and 
beneficent influence on the thoughts of many statesmen 
in America and in England, where some of the sugges- 
tions which it contained were to be realized. Although 
Sir Thomas More was never, as far as is known, sufifi- 
ciently under the influence of Colet to join with him in 
longing to see Europe enjoying an open Bible and to see 
Roman Catholicism converted into a regenerated and pure 
religion, yet a time was to come when even More — a 
persecutor though he was — was to declare of Colet that 
" For centuries there hath not been among us any one 
man more learned and holy." 

Among Colet's students was to be found a youth who 
had a peculiarly sad history, and whom even the exhorta- 
tions of the kind Dean were not to be successful in causing 
to take a far bolder stand in favor of Evangelical religion 
than he did take. Not a little however, of what was good 
in the life of Erasmus has been attributed to the influence 
of Colet. Erasmus indeed had had a sad life. Before he 
was born his father, supposing — owing to a falsehood 
that had been told him — that she who was about to be- 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. I4I 

come a mother had died, in a fit of melancholy became 
a monk. Although he was not allowed by his Church to 
recognize his almost more than orphan son, yet, despite 
all the difficulties in his way, he succeeded in securing 
him in some respects, a very high education. Although 
Erasmus was to bitterly grieve the old professor at Ox- 
ford by acting a timid part in the arena of history, and to 
fail sadly in taking the stand which he should have taken 
respecting some great religious questions, yet he was to 
give the public a revised text of the new Testament in 
Greek which was to do much towards thoroughly awaken- 
ing Europe from the spell cast upon it by the dark ages. 
While at Oxford Erasmus wrote : " Here I have met with 
humanity, politeness, learning not trite and superficial, 
but deep, accurate, true old Greek and Latin learning, 
and withal so much of it, that, but for mere curiosity, I 
have no occasion to visit Italy." Erasmus then speaking 
of one of the professors said that in him he admired " an 
universal compass of learning." Of another he said, his 
"■ acuteness, depth, and accuracy are not to be exceeded." 
Among the students who were to listen with deep 
attention to the eloquence of Colet — rendered especially 
impressive by its earnestness — was a youth named Wil- 
liam Tyndale. With a profound faith in the truths, of 
Christianity and a fearless faith in the revelations of 
science Colet labored to inaugurate true biblical study. 
He pointed out with sadness the ignorance of Bible 
truth, and the wickedness wofully common, among the 
clergy of his day. On Feb. 12th, 15 12, a great convoca- 
tion gathered in the Cathedral of St. Paul's in London. 
The convocation had practically been assembled by Car- 
dinal Wolsey's direction, partly with a view of suppress- 
ing by persecution heretics — as all who did not believe 
in Roman Catholicism were called. Dean Colet was 



142 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

requested to preach the sermon. His first words fell like 
a thunderbolt upon the ears of haughty bishops. His 
sermon was wonderfully bold as he spoke of reforms 
which were needed in the Romish church. Had it not 
been for the protection of his friend, the Archbishop of 
Canterbury and of the King of England, the hatred of foes 
might have quickly wrought his ruin. At once learned, 
eloquent, bold and earnest in Christian work, of a beauti- 
ful and winning character, ever ready to encourage youth 
to act a truly noble part in life, Colet's influence in the 
circle in which he moved and gave instruction was to be 
felt at times in the happiest manner. Well might William 
Tyndale listen with the generous responsiveness of a 
noble heart to the words of the venerable Dean. 

William Tyndale, however humble was his demeanor, 
was descended from a noble family. His grandfather, 
Baron de Tyndale, had been involved in the wars be- 
tween the proud houses of York and Lancaster. Having 
escaped from a disastrous field of battle, he had lived for 
a time in concealment. The gentle Alicia, the daughter 
and sole heiress of a wealthy family, had married the dis- 
guised Baron. A son had been born to the happy pair, — 
a son who in time inherited the family wealth and be- 
came the father of two sons — one of whom became a dis- 
tinguished merchant and the other, who was William, 
was to make the name of Tyndale historic. Although 
several branches of the Tyndale family were honored 
with knighthood, it is not upon them but upon the life of 
William that the historian is wont to especially linger. 

William Tyndale was born about the year 1477. From 
a child he was instructed in grammar, logic and philoso- 
phy. At a very early age he entered the already vener- 
able University of Oxford and became so proficient in the 
Greek and Latin languages that he was enabled to read 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. I43 

to his fellow-students in St. Mary Magdalen Hall, and to 
the students of Magdalen College, the New Testament. 
William not only studied in Oxford but also entered the 
celebrated University of Cambridge where he is said to 
havo taken a degree. After leaving the university, Wil- 
liam formed a lasting friendship with the noble John 
Frith, who, although his junior in years also studied at 
Cambridge and was possessed of rare scholarly attain- 
ments, of deep piety, and was characterized by beautiful 
and noble manners. He was withal a very earnest-hearted 
reformer, and was to be associated with Tyndale in giving 
to the world many a valuable contribution to religious 
literature. 

William Tyndale became a friar and was set apart as a 
Romari Catholic priest to the nunnery of Lambley. The 
question has sometimes been asked whether one can ever 
expect reforms to originate among Roman Catholic ecclesi- 
astics. It should be remembered that again and again it 
has happened that reforms have been inaugurated even 
among this description of men. It has been seen that 
Tyndale before becoming a Romish ecclesiastic had ob- 
tained a knowledge of Greek, which was to be to him a 
key to the weightiest secrets of the Bible. 

Tyndale was invited to become a chaplain in the hall of 
Sir John Welch, a knight of Gloucestershire, and also to 
act as the tutor of the knight's children. At the table of 
the lord of the manor Tyndale would at times meet the 
prelates and clergy of the country — would meet, — to use 
the words of an historian, — " abbots, deans, archdeacons, 
with divers other doctors and great beneficed men." He 
was grieved and humiliated to see how ignorant these men 
often showed themselves of the truths of the Bible. He 
was even sometimes betrayed into urging them to at least 
acquaint themselves with the truths contained in the New 



144 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

Testament. At last the clerical visitors to Squire Welch 
preferred to resign the good cheer of the knight's table 
rather, as it was expressed by Fuller, " than to have the 
sour sauce of Master Tyndale's company." Tyndale's 
demeanor was at times singularly gentlemanly and pru- 
dent. For example, when the knight's lady, somewhat 
ruffled at seeing the prelates unable to hold a satisfactory 
argument with the learned tutor, asked him whether it 
was probable that she would prefer his judgment to that 
of the wealthy prelates, he politely refrained from reply- 
ing. When, however, he soon afterwards translated from 
Latin into English a valuable religious work, he dedi- 
cated the manuscript to Sir John and his gentle partner. 
This handbook, called " The Pocket-dagger of the Chris- 
tian Soldier," which he thus translated into the English 
language, taught that Christianity does not consist in the 
reception of certain dogmas taught by certain ecclesiastics 
of the Romish Church, or in the observance of ceremo- 
nies, but in yielding service to the Saviour. The work 
was read with interest and the knight and his gentle 
helpmate were converted to Evangelical Christianity. 
Tyndale, however, did not always succeed in holding his 
peace. Once when conversing with a Romish ecclesiastic 
respecting the Pope, his clerical friend exclaimed : " We 
had better be without God's laws than the Pope's." Tyn- 
dale, who believed that the Pope was a man who made 
unchristian pretensions, indignantly replied : " I defy the 
Pope and all his laws ; and, if God give me life, ere many 
years the ploughboys shall know more of the Scriptures 
than you do." Naturally having made such a speech he 
became an object of persecution. Leaving the mansion 
of his kind friend Sir John Welch, he preached, it is said, 
to crowded houses in Bristol. But his name was to be- 
come historic, not because of his eloquence, however noble 



JEFFERSOiYS IDEAL UNIVERSITY. I45 

that was to be, but because of the mighty influence he 
was to be instrumental in exerting by giving to the Anglo- 
Saxon race a translation of the New Testament and a part 
of a translation of the Old Testament, in language which 
will probably for ever, in great measure, leave its impress 
upon— or mould — the English tongue and beneficially 
affect the character of the Anglo-Saxon race. 

Without pausing to here dwell upon the thrillingly 
interesting lives of Tyndale and of his noble helper 
Frith, — lives which became the more interesting as they 
neared their martyrdom, — or to notice the strangely in- 
teresting history of the various translations of the Bible 
into English, — suffice it to say that the more the well- 
informed American citizen contemplates the influence of 
the widely familiar English Bible, — in which, if the Eng- 
lish reader misses some of the beauty of the language as 
it was first given by God to man, he can still in his own 
language hear the words of the Eternal as he speaks to 
his children, — the more he Avill realize how happy it has 
been for the human race that the study of the dead lan- 
guages has been given an honorable place in the uni- 
versities of Great Britain. What Tyndale did for the 
English-speaking race a professor in the great Sorbonne 
in Paris was to do for the French, a professor of the 
University of Wurtemberg was to do for the Germans and 
professors of other universities were to do for different 
divisions of the human race. 

Luther in the year 1524, in a very forcible and eloquent 
address which he sent to all the councillors of all the cities 
of Germany, pointing out the duty of magistrates inter- 
esting themselves in securing to youth the blessing of 
school instruction, urged upon his countrymen, with a 
force to which Germans to this day respond, that the 
study of Greek and Latin and Hebrew should be intro- 



146 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

duced into the German schools. " What use," said the 
great Reformer, " is there, it may be asked, in learning 
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew? We can read the Bible very 
well in German." " Without language," he declared, ''we 
could not have received the Gospel. * * * Languages 
are the scabbard which contains the sword of the Spirit ; 
they are the casket that contains the jewels. * * * If 
we neglect the languages, we shall not only eventually 
lose the Gospel, but be unable to speak or write in Latin 
or in German. No sooner did men cease to cultivate 
them than Christendom declined until it fell under the 
power of the Pope ; but, now that languages are again 
honored, they shed such light that all the world is aston- 
ished, and every one is forced to acknowledge that our 
Gospel is almost as pure as that of the Apostles them- 
selves." * 

That Luther and the Reformers should have looked 
upon the cultivation of such languages as Hebrew and 
Greek and even of Latin as rendering a priceless service 
to the cause of Christianity, was natural. That many 
statesmen, feeling that in every land there must be among 
the people an intimate relationship between intelligent 
views respecting religious truths and of good government 
believe that, independent of various other considera- 
tions, if the study of any languages is helpful in aiding 
people to form right religious views, it indirectly renders 
a State a great service. As the soldiers of an army 
must be disciplined and prepared to do effective work 
by being made to go through evolutions and to take part 
in military manoeuvres in many cases of no particular 
use in themselves save for the possible benefit which the 
State may some day realize from having a well-instructed 

*" History of Reformation in Sixteenth Century" by J. H. Merle 
D'Aubigne, pp. 173, 174. 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. I47 

army at its disposal, so the minds of a certain class of 
American citizens should be disciplined and prepared for 
usefulness in various ways to the State. " The learning 
Greek and Latin," Jefferson wrote in his book entitled 
" Notes on Virginia," " is going into disuse in Europe. I 
know not," he continued, "what their manners and cus- 
toms may call for; but it would be very ill-judged in us 
to follow their example in this instance. * * * I do not 
pretend that language is science. It is only an instrument 
for the attainment of science. But that time is not lost 
which is employed in providing tools for future opera- 
tion." To these condensed views of Jefferson's let it here 
sufifice to notice a letter which he wrote, under date of 
Aug. 24th, 1 8 19, to John Brazier, a Greek scholar, respect- 
ing the value of a knowledge of the Greek and Latin lan- 
guages to American youth. The letter illustrates some 
of the feelings which the venerable statesman experienced 
when providing instruction in Latin and Greek for a cer- 
tain class of the youth of Virginia. He said : " Among 
the values of classical learning, I estimate the reading the 
Greek and Roman authors in all the beauties of their 
originals. And why should not this innocent and elegant 
luxury take its preeminent stand ahead of all those ad- 
dressed merely to the senses. I think myself more 
indebted to my father for this than for all the other luxu- 
ries his cares and affections have placed within my reach ; 
and more now than when younger and more susceptible 
of delights from other sources. * * * To the moralist 
they are valuable, because they furnish ethical writings 
highly and justly esteemed. * * * To these original 
sources he must now, therefore, return, to recover the 
virgin purity of his religion. The lawyer finds in the 
Latin language the system of civil law, most conformable 
with the principles of justice of any which has ever yet 



148 JEFFERSON 'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

been established among men, and from which much has 
been incorporated into our own. The physician as good 
a code of his art as has been given us to this day. * * * 
The statesman will find in these languages history, poli- 
tics, mathematics, ethics, eloquence, love of country, to 
which he must add the sciences of his own day, for which 
of them should be unknown to him ? And all the sciences 
must recur to the classical languages for the etymon, and 
sound understanding of their fundamental terms. For 
the merchant I should not say that the languages are a 
necessity. Ethics, mathematics, geography, political 
economy, history, seem to -constitute the immediate 
foundations of his calling. The agriculturist needs ethics, 
mathematics, chemistry and natural philosophy. The 
mechanic the same. To them the languages are but 
ornament and comfort. I know it is often said there 
have been shining examples of men of great abilities in 
all the businesses of life, without any other science than 
what they had gathered from conversations and inter- 
course with the world. But who can say what these men 
would have been had they started in science, on the shoul- 
ders of a Demosthenes, or Cicero, of a Locke or Bacon, or 
a Newton ? To sum the whole therefore, it may truly be 
said that the classical languages are a solid basis for most, 
and an ornament to all the sciences. 

' " I am warned by my aching fingers to close this hasty 
sketch, and to place here my last and fondest wishes for 
the advancement of our country in the useful sciences 
and arts, and my assurances of respect and esteem for the 
Reviewer of the Memoire on Modern Greek." 

However often taught in a, way subject to just criti- 
cism, Jefferson wished the study of the classics to be 
neither condemned nor eulogized save .with discrimina- 
tion. 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. I49 

The study of mathematics Jefferson held in high 
esteem. This important science has a history whose com- 
mencement goes backward for thousands of years. That 
a goodly number of cultured Greeks had made interesting 
progress in mathematical knowledge is well established. 
The Grecians, it is supposed by some writers, were in- 
debted for this knowledge to the Egyptians. Others 
would suggest that there is a strong probability that the 
people of Hindustan and of China had possessed valua- 
ble mathematical knowledge in a remote age and that 
modern civilization is probably especially indebted to 
the Orient for its knowledge of algebra. The historic 
Roman Empire having become a wreck and various revo- 
lutions sweeping over a large part of Europe, the science 
of mathematics was ultimately led to seek, for some cen- 
turies, refuge from' barbarism and neglect in the bosoms 
of Mussulmans. The professors of Islam, after conquer- 
ing a territory twice or thrice the size of all Europe, — 
committing deeds of woful and almost incredible cruelty, 
— turned their furious zeal into the cause of learning. 
Without pausing to dwell upon the great universities and 
vast libraries which Mahometans, in the golden age of 
their religion reared, sufBce it to say that the followers 
of Mahomet recognized the value to mankind of the 
science of mathematics. The great Caliph Almamon 
caused the relics of Grecian science to be sought for and 
translated into Arabic. As an absolute sovereign he 
exhorted his subjects to acquire an acquaintance with the 
volumes which he provided for their welfare. If the 
Arabians did not add as much to mathematical science 
as they did to some departments of useful learning, yet 
it is to them that modern civilization is supposed to be 
indebted for the mystic numerals — sometimes called 
Arabic figures — used in arithmetic and to a great extent 



150 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

in all branches of mathematics. In the Arabic seats of 
learning youth of various religious beliefs were sometimes 
to be found enjoying a scholarly fellowship. Even Pope 
Sylvester II., whom some Roman Catholic historians are 
wont to regard as having been an uncommonly learned 
man for his age, and who was even accused^ by the igno- 
rant populace by whom he was surrounded, of using magi- 
cal arts, when a youth acquired a part of his education! 
at one of these Mahometan establishments of learning. 
Even young women were to be seen in these universities 
enjoying the same advantages as did their brothers. 
Indeed it is recorded that the devoirs paid by the most 
distinguished men to the ladies of their choice were often 
as truly in homage of their intelligence as to the charms 
of their beauty and of their virtue.* Unhappily, the 
Saracens, after suffering greatly by the wars of the Cru- 
sades, which misguided, so-called Christians waged against 
them, — wars in which millions of lives were lost, — and 
after enduring in Spain bitter persecution culminating in 
half a million of them — at the instance of the Inquisi- 
tion — being compelled to leave by way of the sea under 
circumstances of cruelty so awful that the historian may 
well shudder as he contemplates its enormity, — the im- 
poverished Mussulmans made the fatal mistake of not ade- 
quately providing institutions of learning- for their youth. 
Without pausing to dwell upon the improvements which 
have been made during recent centuries in mathematical 
science, suffice it to say that in all land's and by all intel- 
ligent communities, the inestimable value to nations of an 
acquaintance with the science of mathematics is in a good 
degree appreciated. To the astronomer who turns his 
telescope towards the abyss of space ; to the navigator who 
recognizes the sun in its meridian splendor, and many of the 

* Philobiblius' " Hist, of Educatioa." 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 151 

stars, as friendly sign-boards in the heavens to point out 
to him his way across the waters of the deep ; to the 
engineer who builds any one of a thousand different 
structures useful to man ; to the mechanician who makes 
inventions, sometimes of priceless worth to mankind, — 
and indirectly to every one who enjoys the privilege of 
living surrounded with the advantages of modern civiliza- 
tion, — the science of mathematics is a blessing worth 
preserving. 

The University of Virginia was to have a department 
of mathematics in which youth, who chose to do so, 
could — sometimes laboriously indeed — prepare them- 
selves for future usefulness to the world. There, the 
student's mind, if given to idle wandering, was to be dis- 
ciplined and invigorated and given an exactitude of judg- 
ment on various subjects, while at the same time it was 
to be furnished with mystic knowledge which would aid 
it, sometimes, in philosophic enquiries of deep concern 
to humanity. 

In the University of Virginia the various useful sciences 
which are embraced under the name of natural philosophy 
— including chemistry — were to be fearlessly, honestly, 
and earnestly taught. The authority of no man, whether 
he was celebrated, and had been held in as high esteem 
in mediaeval institutions of learning as was Aristotle, or 
whether he was arbitrary and powerful as were certain 
hierarchs, was to be valued beyond its worth. Sciences 
were also to be taught about which Aristotle and Italian 
Pontiffs had been as ignorant as babes. Students were 
to be taught how to examine in an intelligent and just 
manner, by philosophical experiments, various phenomena 
worthy of the consideration of the godlike mind of man. 

It is wonderfully strange that men and women, sur- 
rounded for thousands of years by the wonders of 



152 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

creation, should not have studied more closely than they 
have the handiwork of the Almighty and his ordainings, 
commonly called laws, respecting the government of the 
material universe. In all ages, doubtless, there have been 
enquiring minds who have looked with mysterious, in- 
quisitiveness at various phenomena. They have become 
fascinated as they have made, and in many instances 
recorded and classified, observations of one kind and 
another respecting the materials of which the world is 
composed. Thus each generation has added to the 
knowledge of mankind respecting the mysteries of crea- 
tion. There have been, perhaps indeed, wonderful arts 
and sciences lost to the world because past generations 
have not always been as considerate as they should have 
been about providing for their transmission to> their pos- 
terity, or, because the iron hand of despotism has been 
permitted to hold a withering sway over the best inter- 
ests of the human family, yet the world to-day owes a 
debt of gratitude to many a student of bygone, ages. 

Millions upon millions of men and women have looked 
on clear nights, at the glories of the varied heavenly 
canopy over them, as by ones and twos a vast assemblage 
of worlds have^ to a certain extent, illumined the night. 
That the sun, as. it shone in its splendor in the day had 
certain peculiarities ^ — that, for example, its rays warmed 
the earth and enabled the- husbandman to accomplish 
much that without its friendly aid could not be accom- 
plished by man, would be noticed and in time recorded. 
Though man- with all his wonderful dormant capabilities 
lived until comparatively recent times without a telescope 
and without other marvellous instruments with which the 
civilized nations of to-day are blessed, and could not with 
the unaided eye know how orderly and interesting are the 
wonderful movements of the celestial bodies, could not, 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 53 

perhaps, realize the greatness of the distances from the 
earth to the planets and mighty suns — so-called fixed 
stars — upon which he gazed ; indeed though man before 
the invention of the telescope and other astronomical 
instruments could not know of many of the wonders of 
the illimitable heavens which are known at the present 
day to science, yet he could and did make and record 
many an observation which has added to the intellectual 
wealth of his fellow-man. Thoughtful men engaged in 
pastoral employment and looking at times after their 
flocks at night, or travellers obliged to sleep under the 
starry skies, would learn to note the time of night when 
certain brilliant luminaries would arise above the horizon 
or assume certain positions in the great heavens, and thus 
be enabled to assure themselves, from time to time of the 
number of hours which would pass ere the welcome sun 
would cast his golden light upon their way. They would 
learn to welcome the brilliant star which heralded the 
morning. In their admiration of its beauty they would 
name it Venus. By collecting and intelligently grouping 
together facts respecting the celestial bodies, valuable 
knowledge would be obtained. These studies would in 
time be called the science of astronomy. Age after age 
new and wonderful facts respecting the great orbs which 
sweep through space would be noted. For various 
reasons some of these observations would require hun- 
dreds or even thousands of years to satisfactorily make. 
Who would have believed that a time would come when 
youth in a very short time could learn from competent 
instructors in universities, truths — some of them of great 
practical utility to the human race — which had required 
ages of observations and study by men, some of whom 
were as gifted and devoted in labor as were Copernicus, 
Galileo, Kepler and Herschel, to discover ! 



154 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

Millions upon millions of people have realized that they 
were surrounded by mysterious phenomena. Why, when 
the heavens would grow black with the approaching storm, 
would the darkness sometimes be for an instant dissipated 
by the flash of the zigzagging lightning, which would 
perhaps strike to the earth a human being or in an instant 
shatter a lofty tree ? When the man of science dis- 
covered what was the mysterious agent which was 
employed in producing lightning he was enabled, to a 
certain extent and in a miniature degree, to artificially 
produce lightning. He was enabled to even devise 
a way by which he could summon lightning . from the 
clouds and command it to do man no injury. Men of 
science in time asked themselves why the agent which 
produces lightning and manifests itself in various ways 
should not be employed in performing useful services for 
men. Reasoning thus a student of the science of elec- 
tricity gives the world, with aid wisely extended to him 
by the State, the art of electrical telegraphy, by means of 
which a person in one part of the world can instantane- 
ously hold intercourse with his fellows in many other 
parts of the world. It is true that no electric telegraph 
such as exists to-day was known in Jefferson's time, 
but the statesman's penetrating wisdom realized that 
electrical phenomena were deserving of careful investiga- 
tion by man, and so he especially named, in a communica- 
tion to the Legislature of his native State, electricity as 
one of the subjects respecting which instruction was to be 
given in the university which he and his colleagues were 
rearing for the youth of Virginia. 

The atmosphere, as a vast areal sea, covers the earth. 
Man, whose condition on the earth is really that of a 
creature at the bottom of a vast ocean, feels the air as it 
fans the sad or joyous brow, or in fury bows the forest or 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. I 55 

ruffles into angry billows the bosom of the ocean. Of 
what is it composed ? Has it peculiarities which an 
intelligent being can find out ? Strange it is that al- 
though ages upon ages have passed since man first 
breathed air, yet until Jefferson's friend Priestley in 1774 
discovered that air was composed principally of the gases 
which are now known as oxygen and nitrogen, — a discov- 
ery of inestimably great importance, even often being a 
means of saving life, — it was unknown to the human race. 
Yet such knowledge as this, and many other highly im- 
portant facts growing- out of it, can now be taught in a 
few lessons, and convincing illustrations of its value be 
made apparent, in every well-regulated seat of learning 
in the world. The branch of natural philosophy called 
pneumatics treats not only of the properties of the air, 
but also of those of other elastic fluids. Without pausing 
to speak of various sciences in detail or of the greatness 
of the dormant capabilities of man, suffice it here to 
notice that each branch of the natural and physical 
sciences has had given to it a name of its own. For 
example, the student who receives instruction relating to 
the pressure and equilibrium of such unelastic, or almost 
unelastic, fluids as water or mercury, is said to be study- 
ing hydrostatics. The youth who turns his attention to 
that part of mechanics which treats of forces in action as 
opposed to forces in equilibrium is said to be studying 
dynamics. It is hardly necessary to more than simply 
state that each science is intimately related to^ all the 
other sciences. It would be difficult to calculate exactly 
which one of many sciences is the most important to the 
human race. The mechanician may give a valuable con- 
tribution to the wealth of his country, but perhaps he will 
find that the geologist by a single discovery of metal- 
liferous deposits has opened up a new industry and has 



156 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. < 

been enabled to add more even than he has himself to the 
well-being of society. But undoubtedly some departments 
of learning may at times be worthy of especial encourage- 
ment. Imperfectly educated statesmen, it is to be feared, 
too often 'do not realize the value to the world of the 
abstract sciences. It was not so, however, with Jefferson. 
In his sixth Annual Message to Congress, when urging 
the founding of a great national university at Washing- 
ton, he said : " A public institution can alone supply those 
sciences which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary 
to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to 
the improvement of the country, and some of them to its 
preservation." 

The well-informed student of the natural and physical 
sciences knows that the world has been created and is 
governed in many respects by wise economic Divine 
ordainings which are commonly, but somewhat loosely, 
called laws of nature. Who will duly estimate the value 
to mankind of every new secret of nature which the 
scientist discovers? Who will say that the Almighty has 
not ordained physical laws of which the wisest natural 
philosophers of this age are as yet unacquainted, — laws 
which when discovered will be made to minister in new 
ways to human needs. The man who discovers that cer- 
tain phenomena are the result of certain causes may so 
arrange matters as to prevent one of the ordinarily act- 
ing causes from producing its effect. He can then, not 
improbably, witness a new phenomenon. By varied ex- 
periments he may learn how to produce results which 
may be of practical utility to society. If he succeeds in 
making known to the world an hitherto unknown ordi- 
nance which the Almighty has established, he deserves 
the gratitude of his fellows. The newly discovered law, 
the natural philosopher knows, will hold good, under like 



'JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 57 

circumstances, in the most distant parts of the illimitable 
universe. For example, if under certain circumstances 
electrical phenomena are produced in this world, the nat- 
ural philosopher who has observed the unity of plan, — 
the economic system — adopted by the Creator of the 
universe, knows that under the same circumstances elec- 
trical phenomena must take place throughout the wide 
domains of the universe of which this world forms a part. 

One of the sciences which as far back as the year 1779, 
especially attracted Jefferson's attention and which he 
aided in having introduced into the University of William 
and Mary, with whose management he was ofificially con- 
nected, was chemistry. The science of modern chemistry 
was in his day scarcely more than in its infancy. He 
naturally wished it to be duly cultivated in Virginia's 
State University. Who will estimate the wealth which 
the cultivation of this science in modern times has brought 
to the United States. With its aid metals of great value 
are economically obtained from ores which hitherto were 
so refractory as to be useless. With the aid of chemistry 
steel can be made far more cheaply than iron was made 
in Jefferson's day. It is perhaps not too much to say 
that the art of economically making steel rails — which 
will stand ten or even sometimes over thirty times more 
wear and tear than will iron rails, — and of making steel 
ships which are far stronger as well as lighter than are 
iron vessels, and therefore capable of carrying heavier 
cargoes, is worth to the world hundreds of millions of 
dollars. In innumerable ways many useful arts may be 
said to owe their existence to the cultivation of the science 
of chemistry. 

Of course the great educational establishment which 
Jefferson planned was to be provided with fitting instru- 
ments and apparatus with which to make very many 



158 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

scientific experiments. In mediaeval times it was far too 
common in educational institutions to make no adequate 
provision for making experiments with the aid of scientific 
apparatus and thus establishing or correcting current 
statements respecting mysteries of nature. A youth 
might even fancy that it was a sin to suspect that some 
authorities such as Aristotle or certain Romish ecclesias- 
tics were sometimes very far from being infallible in many 
of their utterances. In modern times youth are, or 
should be, taught that truth has nothing to fear by sub- 
jecting it to examination. Youths are encouraged to 
examine for themselves phenomena. However interest- 
ing it may be to listen to a traveller gifted with descrip- 
tive talents as he tells of scenes in distant lands, it is 
often still more instructive — and the knowledge acquired 
in often exacter, — to see these scenes with one's own 
eyes. However interesting it may sometimes be to listen 
to a man who tells of the wonders of the starry heavens, 
it is still more interesting to see these wonders when aided 
with instruments which have the mystic power of bring- 
ing one a thousand and more times nearer than mortals 
with unaided vision can approach to their wondrous 
presence. Often as the student has looked for the first 
time through a telescope, at the glories of the heavens, 
he has uttered a cry of wonder ! Often, within the last 
few years, as students have been aided in their examina- 
tion of celestial phenomena by the marvellous spectro- 
scope, which science has in recent times put into their 
hands, they have seen with their own eyes the demonstra- 
tion of wonders which some of the most distinguished 
men of science in the bygone ages have never known ! 
By being introduced to philosophical instruments the 
students are made to feel at home in a workshop of science 
and are qualified to intelligently examine, in any part of 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 59 

the world, many of the wonders of creation. Let a pro- 
fessor be imagined telling a student about electrical 
phenomena and not possessing instruments with which 
to exhibit any of the electrical mysteries with which man 
is surrounded ! A happy event it was in the life of Benja- 
min Franklin that at the same time that he listened for the 
first time to an English gentleman discoursing upon elec- 
tricity he was shown an electrical apparatus and invited 
to aid in making experiments. He became interested in 
the phenomena which he saw and supplied himself with 
similar electrical apparatus and made one experiment 
after another until he made discoveries respecting elec- 
tricity of deep interest to the world. 

Suppose students at a university are told of minute life 
which is sometimes brought to the surface of the earth by 
even worms, where human beings or animals which have 
died of various diseases have been buried, and should be 
told that this minute life could be artificially bred and in 
time introduced into the blood of man or of beast — 
somewhat as vaccine is introduced into the human system 
to protect it against small-pox, — to protect man and beast 
against the ravages of cholera or of various other diseases, 
— suppose that many equally wonderful facts should be 
told students, — they might listen indeed with attention 
or, it might be, with incredulity. Should a professor, how- 
ever, by means of a microscope enable students to see 
for themselves varieties of minute life, they would have 
profounder and more practical views of the wonders 
revealed by science than they could possibly have if their 
lesson was not illustrated by suitable instruments. 

Often with deep interest would nations hear that men 
were making physical experiments, if they realized the 
vastness of the extent to which such experiments in time 
would be likely to affect the well-being of mankind. For 



1 



l6o JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

example, with what interest would they have watched Dr. 
Black when making experiments with water and steam by 
which he was enabled to give to the world the theory of 
latent heat — a theory which he was enabled to explain 
to Watt and to thus help him to give to the world the 
modern steam-engine. The philosophical instruments 
with which Dr. Black and Watt experimented in the ven- 
erable University of Glasgow indeed cost that celebrated 
seat of learning money, but the money thus expended was 
returned many times to the world. Doubtless there were 
once people who criticised Yale College for spending a 
considerable part of a fund which it received from 
the State of Connecticut, for philosophical apparatus. 
But who would do so after one of its students, Prof. 
Morse, had given to the world a mystic and invaluable 
electric telegraph ? 

One of the branches of learning which Jefferson consid- 
ered especially worthy of a place in an American univer- 
sity was what he called the science of government. Man 
is a social being. He cannot long live separated from his 
fellows. A large number of people to live happily 
together and to realize the greatest advantage from their 
association need to make wise regulations for their com- 
mon welfare. The history of the human race has shown 
that to organize a government such as will best promote 
the happiness of all who are interested in its maintenance, 
is a task requiring much wisdom The art of government 
has received the attention of at least some thoughtful 
minds in every generation for thousands of years. In past 
ages there have quite often been framed wise laws which 
have been a blessing to humanity. In many respects, 
however, the condition of man for thousands of years has 
been far from being as happy as it might have been. 
Often has it happened that he has been obliged to obey, 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. l6l 

to a greater or less extent as a slave, some military 
chieftain or some tyrant who by monstrous wickedness 
has succeeded in holding thousands of the human family 
in subjection. Even superstitions, degrading as they are 
false, have been by various means employed to help to 
accomplish the enslavement of the populace. Christianity 
when she came to earth in unsullied purity from the 
Father of the human race had the inspiration of heaven in 
her lips, the nobility and love of Divinity in her eye, the 
loveliest gentleness in her mien, and was the bearer of the 
kindliest blessings to humanity. But in her name a certain 
class of misguided men, who, often without knowing the 
truth themselves have in reality been teachers of false 
religions to \.\\t ignorant, have joined hands with tyrants 
with the understanding that each was to help the other in 
maintaining their unholy power. To speak of all the ills 
which man has suffered from civil and religious tyranny 
would be to present a dark part of the picture of the 
history of the world — only exceeded, perhaps, by the wild 
scenes of anarchy which have sometimes taken place 
among an unlettered and oppressed people. 

Jefferson believed that man was endowed by his Crea- 
tor with certain rights which should be regarded as inalien- 
able prerogatives. For example he believed that every 
human being should be allowed to worship his Creator 
without being tormented with such an institution as was 
the Spanish Inquisition, and that nations had a right 
to frame for themselves just Constitutional forms of gov- 
ernment. Every one blessed with intelligence can readily 
realize that his happiness and welfare can be affected by 
the government under which he lives. Whether he lives 
in a community in which the freedom of the press is not 
secured to him ; — whether he is, or is not, protected by 
some such wise law as that known as habeas corpus, so 
6 



/o 



l62 JEFFERSOiV'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

that he may not be arrested and kept in prison without 
an opportunity of defending himself; — in short whether 
he Hves in a land in which the will of an irresponsible 
despot is allowed to be supreme, or whether he lives in a 
land in which he enjoys such rights as the Virginian 
statesman regarded as inalienable, is of momentous con- 
sequence to him. A large part of the world, Jefferson 
believed, was in his day incapable, on account of their 
lack of intellectual culture, of enjoying such a form of 
government as exists in the United States. He believed, 
however, that even the most degraded people were en- 
titled to enjoy certain rights which would soon fit them to 
enjoy the blessing of civil liberty. To fully define civil 
liberty is not as easy a work as some might suppose. 
The learned Dr. Lieber in one of his valuable treatises on 
" Government " * has held that, '' it chiefly consists in 
guaranties (and corresponding checks), of those rights 
which experience has proved to be most exposed to inter- 
ference, and which men hold dearest and most important." 
It will readily be seen that even according to this limited 
definition, the work of the statesman of a republic is of 
high importance to the human family and cannot be 
performed without a certain amount of wisdom. 

When an enslaved and unlettered people rise against 
a despot and hurl him from the seat in which he has 
intrenched himself, scenes of frightful anarchy are sadly 
often followed in their turn by new scenes of despotism. 
The world has been wofully slow to learn the lesson which 
Jefferson learned by observing the revolutions of his day 
— in which millions of people perished, — that statesmen 
who wish to meliorate the condition of the enslaved 
should feel it to be an indispensable part of their noble 
work to provide for the enlightenment of the intellects of 

* Vol. i., p. 54, 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 63 

their degraded countrymen. He had seen deeds of awful 
violence and bloodshed perpetrated by well-meaning 
patriots in different lands in their attempts to depose 
despotism and to secure to their countrymen the blessings 
of good government. He had known of many martyrs 
who had given their lives for, as they supposed, liberty, 
when they themselves were imperfectly qualified by edu- 
cation and knowledge to be reformers. He had thought 
upon the condition of the hundred and fifty or more 
millions of the people of Africa who live in wretchedness 
and amidst constant danger of strifes, — of wars in which 
hundreds of thousands of prisoners are yearly sold into 
hopeless slavery — and had even calmly considered the 
practicability of America's giving to Africa arts and 
sciences and the blessings of civil liberty and of self-gov- 
ernment. He knew that in no land were highly learned; 
statesmen born in a day. He had mingled with states- 
men whom he had seen do a work for America wdiich 
surpassed in beneficence the work of many of the greatest 
philanthropists whose deeds have been preserved in 
history. He felt that the statesman no less truly than 
the Christian minister could labor for the happiness and 
welfare of mankind. 

The legislator is invested with power which may injure | 
or benefit nations, — may sometimes be even so great that ' 
he may be enabled to bequeath ruin, or much happiness, 
to posterity. Wide indeed is the range of objects with | 
which he should be conversant, and long and laboriously 
must he labor if he would wish to act the part of the 
noblest ideal of a statesman. He must visit libraries, he 
must at times collect statistics by which the better to 
understand social tendencies and phenomena as well as to 
have some knowledge of the resources of his own and of 
foreign nations. He may even have to travel in his own 



164 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

and in foreign lands to make observations of various 
kinds which may enlarge the range of his thoughts. He 
will at times have occasion to summon to his aid the facts 
brought to light by many sciences and to acquaint him- 
self with many a lesson to the world recorded on the 
pages of history. Useful and noble should the science 
of legislation be esteemed to be by American citizens. 
Upon it one may almost say all other sciences depend to 
a great extent for their life and cherishment. In the 
statesman's hands are sometimes placed the safeguards of 
life, of liberty, of letters, as well as of the useful arts and 
sciences. 

Jefferson believed that the best interests of the world 
especially demanded that America should be possessed 
of able statesmen. He believed that the golden age of 
American destiny was not in the past but in the future. 
He believed that European governments should not be 
allowed, under any pretence, to acquire territory on the 
American continent or to acquire any islands which lie 
off its coasts. He realized that a wise American policy 
should be carried out by which English, and not Euro- 
pean languages, would spread over the American conti- 
nent — a policy which would make it unnecessary for the 
people of America to maintain large standing armies and 
which would make the likelihood of war breaking out 
between the new and the old world very much less than 
would be the case if unwise artificial barriers between 
parts of America- — some of them under the domination of 
European governments — were allowed to exist — barriers 
which would give rise to border-difficulties and mar the 
bright vision, which the people of the United States should 
cherish, of a continent consecrated to civil liberty and 
to a wise constitutional self-government. He looked upon 
permanent national debts with abhorrence. He felt that 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 65 

republics should rid themselves of national debts as 
soon as practicable, — indeed he believed that one gener- 
ation should not fetter another with debt. He realized 
that if the citizens of a commonwealth wish to enjoy 
certain advantages they should raise money needed to 
successfully carry out their wishes and that every mem- 
ber of a community should cheerfully bear his share of 
necessary public expenses. A nation at times has its 
power, its wealth and happiness increased in the degree 
in which taxes are wisely imposed and justly collected. 
It often thus receives far more than an equivalent for 
its sacrifices. When a nation has a debt it not only 
has to pay a stated interest on its debt, — which of itself 
may be to a no inconsiderable extent a drain upon its 
resources even in ordinary times, to say nothing of crit- 
ical periods in its history, — but it has to pay what may 
be called a second percentage by paying an army of offi- 
cials to collect the revenues out of which to pay the 
interest, — which it cannot help sometimes doing in a way 
vexatious and costly to the people. There was a par- 
ticular reason which made Jefferson hope that American 
statesmen would endeavor to protect the United States 
from being heavily burdened with debt. He had a 
cherished hope that the time would come when the 
United States Government would be enabled to afford to 
systematically raise a revenue to be collected by duties" 
on imported luxuries, for the express purpose of pro- 
moting the interests of education throughout the length 
and breadth of the Republic. When he himself was 
President of the United States he had signed bills giving 
millions of acres of land to the cause of public schools 
and of colleges, but he keenly felt — as will be noticed in 
another division of this volume — that the national gov- 
ernment should yearly and on a systematic and judicious 



l66 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

plan help every section of the Republic to provide for 
the intellectual culture of youth. He would have no 
American have any excuse for growing up illiterate, 
and he would have no one allowed to vote who 
could not read. ;He was wont to cherish a plan of gov- 
ernment by which every community was, in a large meas- 
ure, within a certain sphere, to govern itself. He justly 
regarded, however, such a subject as that of education in 
a great republic to be of national concern no less truly 
than of local interest. Grand indeed were some of Jef- 
ferson's hopes for his country's future. No wonder that 
he wished American youth blessed with opportunities to 
do so to study the philosophy of government and to 
qualify themselves to help to enable the Republic of the 
Western Hemisphere to realize in times of peace and of 
war its grandest and noblest possibilities ! 

That the American statesmen who were Jefferson's 
contemporaries were remarkable for their wisdom respect- 
ing civil liberty will doubtless be conceded by even many 
Europeans. They welcomed well-written books on the 
philosophy of self-government. Thanks to the consider- 
ate and very valuable gifts of some Puritan friends in 
England, the library of Harvard College was especially 
rich in such a class of literature. The English Baptist- 
Puritan, Thomas Hollis, who made many valuable gifts 
to Harvard College, wrote feelingly to Mr. Mayhew, say- 
ing : " More books especially on government are going for 
New England. Should these go safe it is hoped that no 
principal books on that first subject will be wanting in 
Harvard College, from the days of Moses to these times." 
During the war of Independence it was customary for 
the legislature of Massachusetts to annually invite one 
of the clergymen of the Commonwealth to preach a dis- 
course to them. These sermons have recently been 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 6/ 

wisely published in book form and are a very valuable 
contribution to the interpretation of passages in the 
Bible on government. They point out the duty, and the 
limit to the obligation, of citizens of a commonwealth 
to obey rulers. One could wish that even in this day 
such a book could find its way into the hands of every 
thoughtful lover of liberty. Among the patriots of the 
Revolutionary period there was a widespread feeling that 
in a republic it was of high importance that youth 
should have broad and right views respecting the philoso- 
phy of government. As one especially likes to be enabled, 
to hear such worthies express for themselves their views 
respecting such a subject, it may be proper to here pause 
for a moment to duly note some of them. Washington, 
who notwithstanding his many occupations found time 
to act for years as the Chancellor of the University of 
William and Mary, very earnestly urged upon the Re- 
public the importance of teaching youth the science of 
government. In the last Annual Message which he, as 
President of the United States, delivered to Congress, 
after recommending the founding of a great national 
university in the city of Washington, he added : " A 
primary object of such a national institution should be, 
the education of our youth in the science of government. 
In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally 
important, and what duty more pressing, on its legis- 
lature, than to patronize a plan for communicating it to 
those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties 
of the country," When Washington's will was opened 
it was found that after making provision for several 
institutions of learning, and pointing out how he wished 
a part of his estate to be devoted to aiding a national 
university, if Congress should decide to found such a 
centre of learning, he especially spoke of the valuable 



l68 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

opportunity it would afford to youth to acquire, as he 
expressed it, '' knowledge in the principles of politics 
and good government." This recommendation of Wash- 
ington to provide' for a great national university which 
would have a department in which to help to rear learned 
American statesmen was twice repeated by James Madi- 
son. 

As early as Jan. ist, 1769, the learned Benjamin 
Franklin had written to Lord Kames, saying : " I am 
glad to find you are turning your thoughts to political 
subjects, and particularly to those of money, taxes, 
manufacture and commerce. The world is yet much in 
the dark on these important points ; and many mischiev- 
, ous mistakes are continually made in the management of 
them. Most of our acts of Parliament, for regulating 
them, are, in my opinion, little better than political 
blunders, owing to ignorance of the science, or to the 
designs of crafty men, who mislead the legislature, pro- 
posing something under the specious appearance of pub- 
lic good, while the real aim is to sacrifice that to their 
■private interest. I hope a good deal of light may be 
thrown on these subjects by your sagacity and acuteness." 
Such reflections as these by Franklin were practical and 
earnest. In 1777, John Jay, who at that dark period of 
American history was Chief-Justice of the State of New 
York, at the first sitting of the court at Kingston after 
the adoption of the first Constitution of the United 
States or Colonies, in a charge to a grand-jury, said : 
" But let it be remembered that whatever marks of 
wisdom, experience, and patriotism there may be in your 
constitution, yet, like the beautiful symmetry, the just 
proportions, and elegant forms of our first parents before 
their Maker breathed into them the breath of life, it is 
yet to be animated, and till then, may indeed excite 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 69 

admiration, but will be of no use, — from the people it 
must receive its spirit, and by them be quickened. Let 
virtue, honor, the love of liberty and of science, be, and 
remain, the soul of this constitution ; and it will become 
the source of great and extensive happiness to this and 
future generations. Vice, ignorance, and want of vigi- 
lance, will be the only enemies able to destroy it. Against 
these provide, and, of these, be forever jealous. Every 
member of the State ought diligently to read and study 
the constitution of his country, and teach the rising 
generation to be free. By knowing their rights, they will 
sooner perceive when they are violated, and be the better 
prepared to defend and assert them." ^ 

Very much in the same spirit as the learned Jay spoke 
to the people of New York the patriotic Dr. Ramsay \ 
spoke to the people of South Carolina. On the 4th of 
July, 1778, in an oration which he delivered in Charleston, 
he said : " The arts and sciences which languished under 
the low prospects of subjection, will now raise their droop- 
ing heads, and spread far and wide, till they have reached 
the remotest parts of this untutored continent. It is the 
happiness of our present constitution, that all of^ces be 
open to men of merit, of whatever rank or condition, and 
that even the reins of State may be held by the son of 
the poorest man, if_possessed of abilities equal to the 
important station." In his oration he spoke of the time 
"when the single NO! of a king three thousand miles , 
distant was sufficient to repeal any of our laws, however 
useful and salutary ; and when we were bound in all cases 
whatsoever by men, in whose election we had no vote, 
and who had an interest opposed to ours, and over whom 
we had no control." Dr. Ramsay also said : " We are 

* See this eloquent charge of Jay's in " Principles of the Revolution,' 
by Hezekiah Niles, p. 182. 



I/O JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

no more to look up for the blessings of government 
to hungry courtiers, or the needy dependents of British 
nobility ; but must educate our children for these exalted 
purposes. When subjects, we had scarce any other share 
in government, but to obey the arbitrary mandates of a 
British Parliament. But honor, with her dazzling pomp, 
interest with her golden lure, and patriotism with her 
heartfelt satisfaction, jointly call upon us now to qualify 
ourselves and posterity for the bench, the army, the navy, 
the learned professions, and all the departments of civil 
government." He pointed out that, " in our present happy 
system, the poorest school-boy may prosecute his studies 
with increasing ardor, from the prospect, that in a few 
years he may, by his improved abilities, direct the deter- 
minations of public bodies on subjects of the most stu- 
pendous consequence." In this oration Dr. Ramsay 
declared that " A few years will now produce a much 
greater number of men of learning and abilities, than 
we could have expected for ages, in our boyish state 
of minority, guided by the leading-strings of a parent 
country." 

He then added, " How trifling the objects of deliberation 
that came before our former legislative assemblies, com- 
pared with the great and important matters, on which they 
must now decide." Dr. Ramsay further ably pointed out 
that " the weight of each State, in the continental scale 
will ever be proportioned to the abilities of its representa- 
tive in Congress. Hence an emulation will take place, each 
contending with the other, which shall produce the most 
accomplished statesmen. From the joint influence of all 
these combined causes, it may strongly be presumed, that 
literature will flourish in America, and that our inde- 
pendence will be an illustrious epoch, remarkable for the 
spreading and improvement of science. 



JEFFERSON'S WEAL UNIVERSITY. 171 

" A zeal for the promoting of learning unknown in the 
days of our subjection, has already begun to overspread 
the United States. In the last session of our Assembly, 
three societies were incorporated for the laudable purpose 
of erecting seminaries of education. Nor is the noble 
spirit confined to us alone. Even now, amidst the tumults 
of war, literary institutions are forming all over the con- 
tinent, which must light up such a blaze of knowledge, as 
cannot fail to burn, and catch, and spread, until it has 
finally illuminated with rays of science the remotest 
retreats of ignorance and barbarity." * 

To the eloquent words of a past century which have 
just been quoted it may here be noticed that at the time 
when the Constitution of the United States was being 
framed there was a feeling among distinguished American 
statesmen that the literature on the science of govern- 
ment, worthy of a subject so important to the cause of 
liberty, was sadly meagre. Among Washington's papers, 
after his death were found what might be called a lengthy 
manuscript written in his own handwriting giving " An 
Abstract of the General Principles of Ancient and Modern 
Confederacies," with comments on the " vices " which 
history had shown had been by time developed in them. 
It is held by a biographer of James Madison that Madison 
was the author of this work and that it had been sub- 
mitted to Washington who had copied it for his own 
benefit. The work showed an amount of research which 
would have been creditable to any scholar. John Adams 
who was a foreign minister when the Constitution of the 
United States was about being framed wrote — too hur- 
riedly to give the attention to style which he would 
fain have given his work, but in time to enable 

* Ibid., 375-383- 



1 72 JEFFERSON ' S IDEA L UNI VERSIT Y. 

him to take part in the exchange of views respecting 
a form of government suitable for the American con- 
tinent, — his " History of the Principal Republics of the 
World." In this valuable contribution to literature, he 
collected, with, one might almost say marvellous industry 
which indicated a wide range of reading, many historical 
facts. He took occasion to draw attention to the impor- 
tance to nations of studies respecting the art of govern- 
ment. He wrote : " The arts and sciences in general, during 
the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course 
of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic 
arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation, and 
commerce, and the advancement of civilization and hu- 
manity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the 
world, and the human character, which would have aston- 
ished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continua- 
tion of similar exertions is every day rendering Europe 
more and more like one community or single family. 
Even in the theory and practice of government, in all the 
simple monarchies, considerable improvements have been 
made. The checks and balances of republican govern- 
ments have been in some degree adopted by the courts of 
princes." Adams, as he proceeded, after alluding briefly 
to the improvements in government that had been made 
in England and adopted in the United States, added : 
" In so general a refinement, or more properly, reforma- 
tion of manners and improvement in knowledge, is it not 
unaccountable that the knowledge of the principles and 
construction of free governments, in which the happiness 
of life, and even the further progress of improvement in 
education and society, in knowledge and virtue, are so 
deeply interested, should have remained at a full stand 
for two or three thousand years?" As he continued, he 
alluded to his own work. He wrote : " If the publication 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 73 

of these papers should contribute to turn the attention of 
the younger gentlemen of letters in America to this kind 
of inquiry, it will produce an effect of some importance 
to their country. The subject is the most interesting 
that can engage the understanding or the heart ; for 
whether the end of man, in this stage of his existence, be 
enjoyment or improvement, or both, it can never be at- 
tained so well in a bad government as in a good govern- 
ment." 

Enough has now been said to illustrate how desirable it 
was believed to be by distinguished statesmen of a bygone 
generation, that American youth should study the com- 
prehensive science of government. It is pleasant to be 
able to state that in modern times such branches of study 
are especially taught in Columbia College, in Cornell 
University, and in a number of institutions of learning in 
the United States and that the Constitution of the United 
States is studied in quite a thorough manner in a goodly 
number of the high schools of the land. Still it is to be 
feared that American youth are too often satisfied with 
simply manifesting their patriotism by thoughtlessly 
walking in some torch-light procession or in some other 
equally unintellectual manner. Too many young men 
are unable to intelligently speak upon affairs of national 
importance which are likely to influence for good or 
evil the history of the American continent and the 
destiny of coming generations. That civil and religious 
liberty will have, from time to time, battles to fight on 
the American continent may be considered almost cer- 
tain. Jefferson felt that young men should be encour- 
aged even in the courses of reading in which they should, 
for their own pleasure, be led to engage, to be duly influ- 
enced by patriotic and philanthropic considerations. 
Writing to Kosciuszko under date of Feb. 26th, 18 10, he 



174 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY, 

spoke of the young men to whom he had thrown open his 
large library. He wrote : " In advising the course of 
their reading, I endeavor to keep their attention fixed on 
the main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness 
of man. So that coming to bear a share in the councils 
and government of their country, they will keep ever in 
view the sole objects of all legitimate government." 

There is one branch of useful literature which Jefferson 
regarded as of vital importance to citizens of a republic 
and which he believed should be taught in each of the 
divisions of the school system which he had draughted 
for Virginia. This branch of useful learning is histQiy* 
He wished youth to be introduced to historical studies 
and to be thus helped to form a taste for elevating read- 
ing. One of the ways in which man differs from the brute 
creation is that he is able to record for his own welfare 
and for that of his posterity his own experience and ob- 
servations. Every human heart has an unwritten history 
of its own ; a part of which is of a personal nature and is 
not to be revealed save to the Divine Searcher of all 
hearts, but much of a man's experience may be of great 
value to some fellow voyager through life. One can but 
feel at times a sense of sadness as he realizes how short 
in the eternity of time is a human life. What observa- 
tions one can make in life respecting his fellow-mortals 
and of various scenes in the affairs of a great community 
are often, necessarily, incomplete and often superficial — 
indeed the truth in many instances may be entirely differ- 
ent from everything that had been suspected. Strictly 
speaking very much — if one may not indeed say mostly 
all — knowledge is derived from recorded observations 
made by men who have had exceptional opportunities for 
collecting reliable facts. Often a noble wish to be useful 
to at least some members of the great human family has 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 75 

impelled a considerate person to carefully record facts 
respecting some events about which he believes it to be 
important that others should be informed, — indeed upon 
some of which momentous events to nations have hinged. 
One might endeavor to imagine the feelings which have 
prompted various monumental piles to be erected and 
picture-writing and hieroglyphics to be engraved on rocks, 
but suffice it to say that the historian has, at times, been 
enabled to lift the veil which hides the past from the 
vision of the living, and to cause a panorama to pass be- 
fore the statesman's eyes which has been instrumental in 
admonishing him respecting the course which he should 
take if he would avoid mistakes made by men in bygone 
times, and of showing him how to promote the best inter- 
ests of his country. 

The historian aims at presenting correctly many facts 
respecting human affairs with some degree of complete- 
ness and as a whole. He sometimes reveals secrets that 
the public had never suspected. He gives information, 
which he has perhaps spent much of his life in collecting, 
Vv^hich enables one to sometimes view various important 
affairs from a vantage-ground of great value to them. 
If it be true that prejudices have their rise in false views 
of things, he helps to remove these wrong prepossessions 
in the kindest of ways. 

If certain despotic governments by an artful policy 
prevent the great mass of the people from studying his- 
tory, all the more important it is that American youth 
should be early helped to form a taste for historical read- 
ing. As a man looks into the " ghostly shadows of by- 
gone ages " he sees how some men have made mistakes 
in life and how others have acted the part of heroes. 
As he reviews the records of the long struggle between 
despotism and liberty he may well have his heart glow 



176 JEFFERSON' S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

with a warmer appreciation of such liberties as he enjoys. 
As he reviews such fascinating historical volumes as those 
of the eloquent Motley's " Rise of the Dutch Republic," 
he sees how baneful despots can be to a people's welfare, 
and gets some faint idea of how terrible has been the 
struggle between superstition and liberty, and instinc- 
tively is apt to feel how much he has to be thankful that 
Church and State are not united in his own land, and how 
dangerous to the best interests of a free people it would 
be to introduce sectarian despotism into American insti- 
tutions. 

Happily many historians have written in a style so 
interesting that one has but to be introduced to their 
volumes to be deeply interested in them. Thoughtful 
young men may well have it impressed upon their minds 
that the highest ideal of a noble youth forbids that 
history should be read merely for the pleasure of learning 
interesting events in the lives of men and women, and of 
nations. It should be read, at times, in a philosophic 
manner and various thoughtful deductions from the 
events of the past should be made and laid to heart. 
jit was not merely in desultory reading of history that 
'Jefferson would have American youth engage, — although 
even such reading might bring with it many a blessing 
and be probably vastly better than simply reading ordi- 
nary novels, — but he wished them to have a purpose in 
view. He wished them to read with the noble and patri- 
otic object of the better qualifying themselves to pro- 
mote the liberties and the happiness of their fellow- 
citizens. There are doubtless various ways of reading 
history with profit. One of many methods may here be 
mentioned. A student, after a proper preparatory course 
of studies by which some of the cardinal points and 
great epochs which have characterized the drama of 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. lyj 

history have passed somewhat briefly before him, — thus 
giving him some idea of the Hves of leading nations as a 
whole, — could be advised when reading history by him- 
self, to at times do so with well-defined and specific ends 
in view. Let him propose to himself a question to be 
solved, a doubt to be proved well founded or otherwise, 
a problem to be examined, the satisfying of his curiosity 
respecting some points upon which his mind should be 
well established. Let him be taught to philosophize as 
he reads ; — to thoughtfully form his own inferences of 
the effects of certain forms of government and of 
various laws on the mechanism of society and upon the 
current of a nation's life. One might propound to him- 
self such questions as : What is the influence exerted on 
civilization by different systems of religious belief ? 
What form of religion is most friendly to liberty, to 
letters, and to the arts and sciences ? Are there any facts 
in history which would justify an American or any friend 
of civil and religious liberty, dreading that the wiles of 
priestcraft in commonwealths may very injuriously affect 
the best interests of the people ? What are the causes 
which have been instrumental in making any particular 
nation great or degraded ? One who seeks light upon sub- 
jects such as these, and upon many others which might be 
named, and seeks for facts which will help him in forming 
right conclusions respecting them with something of the 
earnestness with which an excited Indian seeks his game, 
finds that one series after another of interesting and in- 
structive events pass before his vision. Many a fond 
illusion will be dispelled while patriotism is enlightened. 
As when a man travels in the interior of the American 
continent to inform himself respecting mines from which 
mineral wealth is obtained, will, often in a peculiarly 
pleasant manner, incidently see much varied scenery, — 



178 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY, 

at one time travelling over thirsty plains, at another time 
finding himself surrounded by landscapes beautiful and 
grand beyond all that he could have imagined, will, it 
may be, have the pleasure of having his eyes attracted 
to some sections of country which he may discover are 
worthy of a special visit on some future occasion, so 
whoever will set out to historically examine any one of 
many subjects such as have been suggested, will inci- 
dently — sometimes in a very pleasant manner — learn 
much about varied scenes, and experiences, through which 
human beings have passed. His mind will be enriched 
with an experience which had he had to depend upon his 
own generally disconnected observations of society, he 
might not be enabled to learn, were his life prolonged a 
thousand years. 

Should a person have his curiosity excited over such a 
question as, Why do arts flourish more in one land than 
in another ? he would consult books and libraries in what 
might appear to a looker-on to be a somewhat random 
manner, but in reality in a way at once instructive and 
entertaining — and occasionally even highly fascinating. 
He would perhaps at the same time find that his studies 
were becoming more and more comprehensive and that 
he had been led insensibly into paths of historical research 
from which he could take, in a peculiarly pleasurable 
manner, a wide survey of the vast drama of human pro- 
gress and be enabled to philosophically detect many of 
the causes which influence for good or evil the best inter- 
ests of the human race. If he is honest in his desire to 
truly satisfy his own mind he will learn to examine the 
authorities upon which different historians base their 
statements respecting various important subjects and con- 
firm or revise or even reverse the judgment of some of 
the narrators of history. By such exercise his mental 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 79 

faculties will often be strengthened. He will learn to 
appreciate at their proper value writers who instead of 
referring to their authorities for the truthfulness of some 
of their questionable statements, remark, in a loose man- 
ner, that their information has been collected from " too 
many sources to name them." A well-taught student 
may be taught to have a carefulness of thought which an 
uninstructed person sadly often does not possess. 

Should the question be raised. What is the weightiest 
of all reasons for teaching history in public schools ? per- 
haps it might justly be answered that independent of the 
Historical facts learned by youth in their school days, are 
in many cases, to be especially prized the good results 
which flow from youths being introduced to such an 
elevating branch of learning and helped in forming a 
taste for such literature. Doubtless many a thoughtful 
person who has spent many a well-employed hour in 
looking over the records of the past, will testify that he 
might have remained a stranger to the pleasures and ad- 
vantages flowing from such study, had he not happily 
been made acquainted with historical books in his school 
days. JefTerson felt that, even if youth should do no 
more than read some well-chosen selections from the 
histories of various countries, including that of their own, 
some of them would derive much benefit from doing so. 
In the volume which he published entitled, " Notes on 
Virginia," he spoke of the educational system which he 
had draughted for his native State. In words somewhat 
similar to those which he had addressed in 1779 to the 
Legislature of Virginia, he spoke of the great importance 
of a commonwealth's supporting a public-school system. 
Alluding to the proposed school system he said : " Of 
the views of this law none is more important, none more 
legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as 



l8o JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

they are the ultimate guardians of their own Hberty. For 
this purpose the reading in the first stage, where they [a 
certain class of the youth of Virginia] will receive their 
whole education, is proposed, as has been said, to be chiefly 
historical." He then added : " History by apprizing them 
of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will 
avail them of the experience of other times and other na- 
tions; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and de- 
signs of men ; it will enable them to know ambition under 
every disguise it may assume ; and knowing it to defeat 
its views. In every government on earth is some trace 
of human weakness, some germ of corruption and de- 
generacy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness in- 
jSensibly open, cultivate, and improve. Every government 
degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people 
alone. The people themselves are its only safe deposi- 
tories. And to render even them safe, their minds must 
be improved to a certain degree." 

The views of Jefferson respecting the importance of 
history being taught in the public schools of a republic 
will be more and more seen to have great force the more 
one realizes the value of historical knowledge to the cause 
of liberty and of good government. In a republic such 
as the United States, in which all citizens may exert an 
influence in shaping the destiny of the American conti- 
nent, and in influencing the measures of legislatures and 
of Executives, a knowledge of history should be widely 
diffused among the people. In the noblest days of the 
great Roman Republic, it was held to be a very important 
matter that the youth who wished to qualify themselves 
for stations of power in public life and to employ them- 
selves usefully in the administration of public affairs, 
should at least be acquainted with the history of their 
own country, A time came, however, when Marius 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. l8l 

could sarcastically intimate that the citizens of the great 
Roman Republic had so far degenerated that their dis- 
tinguished men did not begin to read history until they 
were already elevated to high offices of state. He de- 
clared that " they first obtained the employment, and 
then bethought themselves of the qualifications for the 
necessary discharge of it." 

The evil in the Republic of Rome which Marius sadly 
noticed, it is to be feared exists, to too great an extent, in 
some parts of the United States. In the address which 
Garfield delivered on June i6th, 1867, — to which allusion 
has been made, — he criticised very earnestly the neglect 
of the study of history by the rising generation in the 
United States. He spoke earnestly of the lack of his- 
torical knowledge which was prevalent in the United 
States at the breaking out of their great civil war. As he 
continued, he said : " Seven years ago there was scarcely 
an American college in which more than four weeks out 
of the four years' course was devoted to studying the 
government and history of the United States. For this 
feature of our educational system I have neither respect 
nor toleration. It is far inferior to that, of Persia three 
thousand years ago. The uncultivated tribes of Greece, 
Rome, and Germany surpassed us in this respect. Gre- 
cian children were taught to reverence and emulate the 
virtues of their ancestors. Our educational forces are so 
wielded as to teach our children to admire most that 
which is foreign, and fabulous, and dead, I have recently 
examined the catalogue of a leading New England col- 
lege, in which the geography and history of Greece and 
Rome are required to be studied five terms ; but neither 
the history nor the geography of the United States is 
named in the college course, or required as a condition of 
admission. The American child must know all the 



1 82 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

classic rivers, from the Scamander to the yellow Tiber ; 
must tell the length of the Appian Way, and of the canal 
over which Horace and Virgil sailed on their journey to 
Brundusium ; but he may be crowned with baccalaureate 
honors without having heard, since his first moment of 
Freshman life, one word concerning the one hundred and 
twenty-two thousand miles of coast and river navigation, 
the six thousand miles of canal, and the thirty-five thou- 
sand miles of railroad, which indicate both the prosperity 
and the possibilities of his own country. It is well to 
know the history of those magnificent nations whose 
origin is lost in fable, and whose epitaphs were written a 
thousand years ago ; but if we cannot know both, it is 
far better to study the history of our own nation, whose 
origin we can trace to the freest and noblest aspirations 
of the human heart, — a nation that was formed from the 
hardiest, purest, and most enduring elements of European 
civilization, — a nation that, by its faith and courage, has 
dared and accomplished more for the human race in a 
single century than Europe accomplished the first thou- 
sand years of the Christian era." Garfield, after pointing 
out how easy it would be to give invaluable instruction 
in history even in common schools, added : " After the 
bloody baptism from which the nation has arisen to a 
higher and nobler life, if this shameful defect in our 
system of education be not speedily remedied, we shall 
deserve the infinite contempt of future generations. I 
insist," he continued, " that it should be made an indis- 
pensable condition of graduation in every American col- 
lege, that the student must understand the history of this 
continent since its discovery by Europeans ; the origin 
and history of the United States, its constitution of gov- 
ernment, the struggles through which it has passed, and 
the rights and duties of citizens who are to determine its 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 83 

destiny and share its glory." Long before Garfield spoke 
these words, however, Jefferson had arranged that history 
should be studied in the quiet shades of the University 
of Virginia. 

To arrange wise courses of study for youth having 
different aims in life was a subject which might well 
interest a parent, or a statesman, who believed that a 
good system of education should be made the " keystone 
of the arch of our government." How to most wisely 
select and group together courses of study for the suitors 
of knowledge in a State university for Virginia occupied, 
at times, Jefferson's thoughts for at least well-nigh half a 
century. Writing, under date of July 5th, 1814, to the 
already venerable John Adams, he sought counsel re- 
specting the subject of his patriotic contemplation. 
" When sobered by experience," he wrote, " I hope our 
successors will turn their attention to the advantages of 
education. I mean of education on the broad scale, and 
not that of the petty academies^ as they call themselves, 
which are starting up in every neighborhood, and where 
one or two men, possessing Latin and sometimes Greek, 
a knowledge of the globes, and the first six books of 
Euclid, imagine and communicate this as the sum of 
science. They commit their pupils to the theatre of the 
world, with just taste enough of learning to be alienated 
from industrial pursuits, and not enough to do service in 
the ranks of science. We have some exceptions, indeed. 
I presented one to you lately, and we have some others. 
But the terms I use are general truths. I hope the neces- 
sity will, at length, be seen of establishing institutions 
here, as in Europe, where every branch of science, useful 
at this day, may be taught in its highest degree. Have 
you ever turned your thoughts to the plan of such an 
institution ? I mean of the specification of the particular 



l84 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

sciences of real use in human affairs, and how they might 
be so grouped as to require so many professors only as 
might bring them within the views of a just but enlight- 
ened economy. I should be happy in a communication 
of your ideas on this problem, either loose or digested." 
The question upon which Adams was requested to give 
his counsel is one which deserves far more attention by in- 
telligent and patriotic American heads of families than it 
too generally receives. As the thoughtful Jefferson had 
sought to surround himself by wise counsellors when en- 
gaging in momentous affairs of State, so he, as is revealed 
by his letters, sought to compare the views of eminent 
men of learning with his own respecting this highly im- 
portant question. To the distinguished Thomas Cooper 
— an English professor who was connected with Colum- 
bia College and with other seats of learning, — he wrote 
under date of Jan. i6th, 1814: "I have long had under 
contemplation and been collecting material, for the plan 
of a university in Virginia which should comprehend all 
the sciences useful to us and none others." To the learned 
C-ooper, Jefferson on the following 25th of August again 
wrote : " To be prepared for this new establishment, I 
have taken some pains to ascertain those branches which 
men of sense, as well as of science, deem worthy of culti- 
vation. To the statements which I have obtained from 
other sources, I should value an addition of one from 
yourself. You know our country, its pursuits, its facul- 
ties, its relations with others, its means of establishing and 
maintaining an institution of science. * * * Will you then 
so far contribute to our views as to consider this subject, 
to make a statement of the branches of science which you 
think worthy of being taught, as I have before said, at this 
day, and in this country ? " 

Even when Jefferson was President of the United 
States and weighed down with the many duties devolv- 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 85 

ing upon one holding that high office, and having no 
inconsiderable part of his hours of rest taken up by 
his voluntary labors as Chairman of the Board of Edu- 
cation of Washington, his thoughts reverted to his 
cherished wish to see a worthy State Academic retreat 
secured to the youth of Virginia. Under date of Feb. 
5th, 1803, he wrote asking counsel, to Prof. Pictet of the 
University of Geneva — an establishment which he years 
before, in a letter to Washington, had characterized as 
one of the " eyes of Europe." In this letter he said : 
" I have still had constantly in view to propose to the 
Legislature of Virginia the establishment of one [Uni- 
versity] on as large a scale as our present circumstances 
would require or bear. But as yet no favorable moment 
has occurred. In the meanwhile I am endeavoring to 
procure materials for a good plan. With this view I am 
to ask the favor of you to give me a sketch of the branches 
of science taught in your college, how they are distributed 
among the professors, that is to say, how many profes- 
sors there are, and what branches of science are allotted 
to each professor, and the days and hours assigned to 
each branch. Your successful experience in the distribu- 
tion of business will be a valuable guide to us, who are 
without experience. I am sensible I am imposing on 
your goodness a troublesome task ; but I believe every 
son of science feels a strong and disinterested desire of 
promoting it in every part of the earth, and it is the con- 
sciousness as well as confidence in this which emboldens 
me to make the present request." 

The more one critically follows Jefferson's labors in 
founding a university in Virginia, the more he is apt to 
be surprised at the deep and long-continued thought 
which he gave to the cherished enterprise. In 1776, not- 
withstanding the excitement which attended the differ- 
ences between Great Britain and her Colonies, he had 



1 86 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

\ 

been appointed by the Legislature of Virginia to take 
part with some distinguished associates in revising the 
code of the State. In a part of the revised code — a 
part which he himself draughted and presented to the 
Legislature during the war of the Revolution, — was an 
educational bill which carefully provided that a univer- 
" sity should form a part of Virginia's school system. When 
, Washington was President of the United States, Jefferson 
had submitted to him in a letter — which has happily been 
preserved and published among Washington's papers, — a 
plan by which Washington was to give a quite large sum 
of money, which he contemplated presenting to the cause 
of education, to an undertaking by which the University 
of Geneva, which had been closed by the French Revolu- 
tion, was to be transplanted to the United States. He 
had also in a private correspondence with distinguished 
friends, proposed that the Legislature of Virginia should 
undertake to transplant in a body to Virginia all the 
professors of the University of Geneva. In the book 
which he had published he had written of the proposal of 
founding a State university in Virginia in a way which 
showed that he had the educational interests of his native 
State at heart. To the learned Joseph Priestley on Jan. 
1 8th, 1800, he wrote a letter requesting the distinguished 
scientist to favor him with his views respecting the course 
of culture which it would be wise for a republic to pro- 
vide for its youth. He said : " We wish to establish in 
the upper country, and more centrally for the State, an 
University on a plan so broad and liberal and moderft, as 
to be worth patronizing with the public support, and to 
be a temptation to the youth of other States to come and 
drink of the cup of knowledge, and fraternize with us. 
The first step is to obtain a good plan ; that is, a judicious 
selection of the sciences, and a practicable grouping of 



JEFFEU SON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 8/ 

some of them together, and ramifying of others, so as to 
adopt the professorships to our uses and our means." The 
Virginian statesman, after paying a high compliment to 
Priestley, continued : " To you therefore we address our 
solicitations, and to lessen to you as much as possible the 
ambiguities of our object, I will venture even to sketch 
the sciences which seem useful and practicable for us, as 
they occur to me while holding my pen. Botany, chem- 
istry, zoology, anatomy, surgery, medicine, natural phi- 
losophy, agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, geography, 
politics , commerce, history, ethics, law, arts, fine arts. 
This list is imperfect because I make it hastily, and 
because I am unequal to the subject. * * * I do not 
propose to give you all this trouble merely of my own 
head, that would be arrogance. It has been the subject 
of consultation among the ablest and highest characters 
of our State, who only wait for a plan to make a joint 
and I hope a successful effort to get the thing carried 
into effect." Without pausing to speak of Priestley's 
views — some of which he had published in England, — it 
may here be incidentally stated, that this distinguished 
scientist was a friend of Prpf. Small and of James Watt. 
Whatever may be thought of some writings of his on 
theological subjects, his services to the world as a sci- 
entist had been very great, and he had had a valuable 
experience as an instructor of youth. From many and 
varied sources suggestions respecting useful courses of 
instruction for American youth were to be received. 

In the year 1814 as Jefferson and others were engaged 
in founding, at their own expense, the college which ulti- 
mately became the University of Virginia, Jefferson under 
date of Sept. 7th, 18 14, in a long letter to Peter Carr,* 

* See " Early History of the University of Virginia," J. W. Randolph, 
Richmond, Virginia, 1856, pp. 384-390. 



1 88 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

linfolded his views respecting public education in Vir- 
ginia, He took occasion to speak of the various grades 
of Nschools which should be provided and went into details 
respecting the courses of studies for which provision 
should be made in the State College or University — 
courses which are too numerous to here present. Let it 
then suf^ce to note some unique features of the plan of 
education which he had at heart. Before doing so, how- 
ever, the introductory part of this letter — a letter which 
was brought to the attention of the Legislature of Vir- 
ginia and was so highly esteemed that it was published at 
the State's expense, and was widely distributed, — may 
here be given. The statesman wrote : " On the subject of 
the academy or college proposed to be established in our 
neighborhood, I promised the trustees that I would pre- 
pare for them a plan, adapted, in the first instance, to our 
slender funds, but susceptible of being enlarged, either 
by their own growth or by accession from other quarters. 
*' I have long entertained the hope that this, our native 
.State, would take up the subject of education, and make 
an establishment, either with or without incorporation 
into that of William and Mary, where every branch of 
science, deemed useful at this day, should be taught in its 
highest degree. With this view, I have lost no occasion 
of making myself acquainted wuth the organization of the 
best seminaries in other countries, and with the opinions 
of the most enlightened individuals, on the subject of the 
sciences worthy of a place in such an institution. In 
order to prepare what I have promised our trustees, I 
have lately revised these several plans with attention ; and 
I am struck with the diversity of arrangement observable 
in them — no two alike. Yet, I have no doubt that these 
several arrangements have been the subject of mature re- 
flection, by wise and learned men, who, contemplating 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 89 

local circumstances, have adapted them to the condition 
of the section of society for which they have been framed. 
I am strengthened in this conclusion by an examination 
of each separately, and a conviction that no one of themy 
if adopted without change, would be suited to the cir- 
cumstances and pursuits of our country. The example 
they have set, then, is authority for us to select from their 
different institutions the materials which are good for us, 
and, with them, to erect a structure, whose arrangement 
shall correspond with our own social condition, and shall 
admit of enlargement in proportion to the encouragement 
it may merit and receive. As I may not be able to attend 
the meetings of the trustees, I will make you the deposi- 
tary of my ideas on the subject, which may be corrected, 
as you proceed, by the better views of others, and adapted 
from time to time, to the prospects which open upon us, 
and which cannot be specifically seen and provided for. 

" In the first place, we must ascertain with precision 
the object of our institution, by taking a survey of the 
general field of science, and marking out the portion we 
mean to occupy at first, and the ultimate extension of our 
views beyond that, should we be enabled to render it, in 
the end, as comprehensive as we would wish." Jefferson 
then sketched out a broad educational system, providing 
for each grade of learning up to the highest and providing 
for various studies — such as the physical sciences, includ- 
ing those of electricity and galvanism and magnetism and 
rneteorology, agriculture, horticulture and veterinary, 
marine architecture and military sciences, and adding to 
the lengthy list of courses of study which he enumerated, 
remark, that to the list of studies which he had made, there 
should be added " an &c. not easily enumerated." While 
some young people were expected by Jefferson to fail to 
receive what would be called a highly literary education, 



190 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

and some would leave the grammar school or college — 
the intermediate schools which he had planned — " with," 
as he expressed it, " a sufficient stock of knowledge, to 
improve themselves to any degree to which their views 
may lead them," other youth were to enter what he 
termed the " Professional Schools," and to pursue " each 
science " " in the highest degree it has yet attained." 
One department of the university, which was to be classed 
in some respects with the professional schools was to be 
so peculiar that it is proper to pause for a moment to give 
it especial attention. " The school of technical philoso- 
phy," the statesman wrote, " will differ essentially in its 
functions from the other professional schools. The others 
are instituted to ramify and dilate the particular sciences 
taught in the schools of the second grade on a general 
scale only. The technical school is to abridge those which 
were taught there too much in extenso for the limited 
wants of the artificer or practical man. These artificers 
must be grouped together, according to the particular 
branch of science in which they need elementary and 
practical instruction ; and a special lecture or lectures 
should be prepared for each group — and these lectures 
should be given in the evening, so as not to interrupt the 
labors of the day. The school, particularly, should be 
maintained wholly at the public expense, on the same 
principles with that of the ward schools." After speaking 
somewhat in detail of the classes of youth who would 
attend the different professional schools, Jefferson added : 
i *' To that of technical philosophy will come the mariner, 
, carpenter, ship-wright, pump maker, clock maker, machin- 



* * * 



ist, optician, metallurgist, founder, cutler, druggist 
dyer, painter, bleacher, soap maker, tanner, powder maker, 
salt maker, glass maker, to learn as much as shall be neces- 
sary' to pursue their art understandingly, of the sciences 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 19 1 

of geometry, mechanics, statics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, 
hydrcdynamics, navigation, astronomy, geography, optics, 
pneumatics, acoustics, physics, chemistry, natural history, 
botany, mineralogy and pharmacy." 

Jefferson's idea of providing for courses of technical 
instruction was meant to meet a want which many 
thoughtful people have sometimes felt is worthy of very 
much more consideration in America than it has received. 
Perhaps there is no institution of modern times that 
more eiTectually accomplishes such an end as the states- 
man had in view than does the Cooper Institute of 
New York, where mechanical drawing is taught, and 
where evening courses of lectures, illustrated by experi- 
ments, especially interesting and valuable to mechan- 
ics, are delivered. There have been writers who have 
spoken with much approbation and pleasure of the good 
which is being accomplished in some European nations 
by making considerable provision for what is called 
technical instruction for youth. It is held that these 
departments of instruction have enabled many a youth 
to learn how to earn an honorable support and have raised 
the taste and skill of workingmen to a degree which has 
sensibly added to national wealth and honor, and that this 
sagacious improvement in the courses of public instruc- 
tion has been especially apparent at great International 
exhibitions which have been held in England and in 
France. There have been thoughtful people who have 
felt that American youth too often grow to manhood 
destitute of any knowledge of mechanics or of useful 
trades and are thereby in danger of leaving profitable and 
honorable manual employment to foreigners who have 
enjoyed in European schools advantages of a kind which 
should be widely introduced into America. While all 
intelligent people will agree with much that has been 



192 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

said by these thoughtful writers, yet, to arrange the de- 
tails of an industrial department of any educational estab- 
lishment will require much wisdom. There are people 
who shrink from contemplating a question which, if of 
very great importance to a republic, is at the same time 
very difficult to solve in a practical and satisfactory man- 
ner. There are some general propositions with which 
every one may be expected to agree. For example, a 
knowledge of letters is of such importance to all classes 
of citizens that it may be said to be the basis of almost 
all studies — scientific and industrial not less truly than of 
literary acquirements. A very large number of artisans — 
indeed of all classes of people — would find a knowledge 
of mechanical drawing — by which the eye can be ad- 
dressed sometimes far more satisfactorily than the ear — 
highly useful to them in many departments of work. 
Such instruction might well be given in all public day 
and night schools. A knowledge of commercial arith- 
metic would be valuable to every class of society and 
might be taught sometimes in very practical ways — such, 
for example, as by commercial book-keeping. Almost 
every section of a land so vast as that of the United States 
has some special industry that in some cases it would be 
of a great advantage to youth to understand. In some 
parts of the United States there are mines of the precious 
metals or of coal or of some other useful products of 
the earth, respecting which much that would be interest- 
ing and useful could be taught even in common schools, 
as well as to evening classes of people particularly interested 
in such industries. In other sections of the United States 
there are other industries such as manufactures, or fisheries, 
about which information might be very interesting to 
a certain class of citizens. While the number of lec- 
turers who are capable of interesting and instructing 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. I93 

classes of artisans — especially on some important branches 
of industry — are not as numerous as could be desired, 
yet wisely arranged courses of lectures will have an ele- 
vating tendency in a community. Doubtless, however, 
as far as many industries are concerned, money could 
probably be laid out even to better advantage than by 
providing courses of lectures respecting them. For in- 
stance arrangements could be made by which whoever 
chose to do so could consult books respecting these use- 
ful employments. Jefferson held that the establishment 
of libraries which would be accessible to mechanics of 
every community would be instrumental in doing a vasti 
amount of good. Books which would render friendly 
services to scientists, and to men engaged in various use- 
ful handicrafts, he would have welcomed into the United 
States free of duty. 

Almost every industry is dependent more or less on 
one or more of the sciences. Scientific schools such as 
have been established in recent times in connection with 
some of the leading colleges in the United States give 
much of the kind of instruction needed by youth who are 
to engage in industries in which chemical and various 
kinds of other knowledge is required. Jefferson proposed 
in a paper which he wrote and submitted to the Legisla- 
ture of Virginia — a paper which was signed by Madison 
and by Caleb an d by other of his distinguished colleagues 
who were associated with him in founding the University 
of Virginia — that students should be helped in gaining an 
acquaintance with some of the useful industrial arts by 
being enabled to visit, in a way just to every one, different 
factories. He wrote * : " The use of tools too is worthy of 
encouragement, by facilitating, to such as chose it, an 

* "Early History of the University of Virginia," J. W. Randolph, 1856, 
p. 442. 

7 



194 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

admission into the neighboring workshops." A plan 
similar to the one suggested by Jefferson has been recom- 
mended by an able writer on technical education, who has 
further advised that students should write essays respect- 
ing the industries which they examine, and thus be en- 
couraged to see what is written on these arts in encyclo- 
pedias and in other works of information. By such a 
plan they would be introduced to a variety of industries 
some of which might be esteemed especially worthy of 
cultivation. 

Many an American youth who has grown to manhood 
without having acquired a knowledge of any useful 
handicraft, or business, has felt that his education had 
been imperfect, and has, perhaps, even died of a broken 
heart, feeling that however useful he might hope to be in 
a general way to society, his life was-a failure because he 
was unable to earn his own support. JefTerson was far 
too wise not to recognize that while a certain class of youth 
might be so happily situated in life that he could 
conscientiously advise them to devote their time to 
studies by which they might be enabled to promote the 
general well-being of society, yet that there were vast 
numbers of youth who should be skilled in manual arts 
or in professions. In the University of Virginia some 
young men were to be prepared to become engineers, 
others physicians, others lawyers or members of some 
other useful professions. It is hardly necessary to here 
dwell upon the time which he gave to the establishment 
of the departments of law and of medicine. It may, 
ihowever, be here stated that Jefferson felt that the science 
of medicine was in his day in a very unsatisfactory state. 
While of surgery he had a high opinion he felt that phy- 
sicians often did more harm to their patients than good. 
He felt that in his day the custom of bleeding patients 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 1 95 

and of giving them strong purgatives and pills of various 
kinds was wofully often a cause of deadly injury to the sick. 
A time was to come when he himself was, while lying on 
his death-bed, to spend some of his waning strength in re- 
sisting the efforts of a well-meaning physician who, in a way 
far too common with some physicians with their patients, 
put to his lips a spirituous liquor. If, however, the art of 
medicine was in a deplorable condition, all the more need 
there was that efforts should be made to provide the means 
of a high medical education to students of medicine in 
Virginia, There was one industry which the distinguished 
statesman wished to receive especial encouragement. In 
the university, to the founding of which he was giving 
his best talents, the art of agriculture was to be studied 
as a. Science. 

One of the ways in which civilized people differ from 
savages is that they are better acquainted with the art 
of making the earth yield treasures of food for mankind, 
than are their uncultured brethren. Doubtless, for thou- 
sands of years in some parts of the world, there have 
been people who have been skilled in cultivating the 
earth. For many centuries the emperors of China have 
been wont, with much pomp and ceremony, at stated 
times to set an example to the people of the Empire of 
China of preparing the soil to yield them food. Many a 
Roman aristocrat loved to be considered learned in the 
dignified art of husbandry. When the clenched hand of 
many a mummy which has lain in its silent resting-place 
for thousands of years has been opened, it has been found 
to contain grains of wheat or of some other useful plant. 
The noble works for irrigating the soil, built by people who 
lived in bygone ages, attest the industry and skill with 
which agriculture has been pursued by at least a part of 
the great human family. The Grecians were possessed 



196 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY, 

of the art of cultivating the apple, the luscious pear, the 
cherry, the plum, the quince, as well as the peach and 
the nectarine, and with some other fruits, — including the 
fig and the lemon. Strange, however, one may well feel 
it to be that for thousands of years a large part of the 
human race has been ignorant of the existence of many 
useful plants which are invaluable to man. Some of these 
plants are instrumental in protecting vast numbers of the 
present generation from some dreadful scourges which 
for ages were wont to shorten and often render miserable 
human life — scourges such as never fail to sooner or later 
make their appearance where man is not supplied with 
food containing certain elements needed for his healthful 
sustenance. The extent to which the dreadful disease 
scurvy existed in the world before the potato, and some 
other antiscorbutics, came into common use is well cal- 
culated to amaze a thoughtful student of history. Al- 
though the English people have been probably for cen- 
turies little, if at all, behind in intelligence hundreds of 
millions of the human race, yet they did not even know 
for many ages of such fruits of the earth as Indian corn, 
squashes, carrots, cabbages, or turnips, or potatoes. It 
has been stated by some Portuguese writers,* that the 
progenitor of all the European and American oranges was 
an Oriental tree still living in the last century, which had 
been introduced into Lisbon. Even the common weep- 
ing willow-tree and very many flowers and plants, have 
been imported into the United States in very recent 
} times — indeed the vegetable immigration into America 
has been amazingly large and important. Other plants — 
such as sorghum, which may prove to be of far more 
value to America than even the cotton plant or wheat, — 

* See " The Earth as Modified by Human Action," by George P. Marsh, 
p. 66. 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. I97 

are probably to further illustrate the inestimable wealth 
which the art of agriculture has it sometimes in its power 
to evoke from the earth. 

The importance of agricultural knowledge might well 
claim the consideration of a statesman. The amount of 
land on the North and South American continent which 
will return a profitable harvest to the husbandman is 
probably as large as is all the fertile land of all other 
continents united in the world. Owing to the form of 
the American continent which enables the fructifying 
exhalations of the oceans, and of its great lakes — which 
alone contain one third of all the fresh water of the world, 
— and of its great rivers — nowhere else equalled, — there 
is, compared to Africa and Asia, but a small amount of 
desert land. It has been estimated that, at a low calcula- 
tion, the American continent can supply subsistence for 
about two and a half times as many people as are at 
present on the surface of the earth. Moreover, the Ameri- 
can continent is happily free, to a great extent, from the 
scorching rays of the sun which enervate the body and 
mind of man on some of the great continents of the world. 
Even much, if not almost all, of what has been called 
the deserts of America are suitable for pasturage for 
domestic animals. Millions upon millions of husband- 
men are to have honorable, healthful, dignified and profit- 
able employment in summoning to their call the treasures 
of the earth. 

The United States, by its invaluable Agricultural De- 
partment and by its wise legislation, has greatly aided the 
interests of agriculture. Plants have been introduced to 
American soil whose value are so great to the Republic 
that one may well hesitate to make calculations which 
must aggregate sums which might be deemed, by any one 
who has not given attention to the subject, to be incredi- 



198 ' JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

ble. The United States, by its wise homestead laws, has 
done more than one can easily describe to lift a worthy 
class of citizens above the curse of poverty and to kindle 
in their breasts the fire of patriotism, while at the same 
time lands are redeemed which for ages have lain waste, 
and useless, and are made to minister to the wealth of the 
human family. The vast public domain has been partly 
surveyed and every citizen — indeed every one who even 
states his intention of becoming a citizen, — may, by com- 
plying with some simple and wise laws which have been 
enacted, become owners of a quite large tract of land and 
of a home. Well would it be if many a man in the 
crowded cities of the Republic who perhaps is tempted to 
adopt lawless views respecting industry and wealth, could 
have unfolded to him the reward which a knowledge of 
the art of agriculture in America can be made to yield 
to the well-meaning American citizen ! 

The more one considers the wealth and comfort which 
the art of agriculture brings to the people of the United 
States, the more it will be held in honor. The value of 
forest products by the census of 1880 was $700,000,000. 
Estimating the value of wheat at prices which would 
probably be judged strangely low by many Europeans, the 
amount raised in the United States by the census of 
1880, was $474,291,850. Of hay there was raised an 
amount which was estimated at $371,811,085. The oat 
crop was valued at $150,243,565. The cotton crop at 
$280,266,242. The yield of potatoes was estimated at 
$81,000,000. Not to speak of many other crops of vari- 
ous kinds the amount of corn raised was estimated — 
perhaps indeed too largely — to be worth $679,714,499. 
In short, the agricultural produce including the yield of 
wool and of domestic animals — and probably a billion of 
dollars would be a low estimate for the cattle which were 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. I99 

to be found on farms and plains, — amounted to billions 
of dollars. The vast yearly yield of coal, of iron, of gold 
and silver, and of copper, and of several other highly im- 
portant minerals, were, altogether only estimated by the 
census of 1880, at a valuation of $218,385,452. Surely 
the citizens of a republic possessing such a magnificent 
domain as that of a large part of the continent of America, 
should make a wise provision for the enlightenment of at 
least some of its youth respecting such an important 
industry as that of agriculture. 

Even as an amusement Jefferson felt that the study of 
bptany had claims upon the attention of many Americans. 
Writing to the learned Dr. Thomas Cooper, under date of 
Oct. 7th, 1 8 14, he said: "Botany I rank with the most 
valuable sciences, whether we consider its subjects as 
furnishing the principal subsistence of life to man and 
beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from 
our orchards, the adornments of our flower-borders, shade 
and perfume of our groves, materials for our buildings, or 
medicaments for our bodies. * * * To a country 
family it constitutes a great portion of their social enter- 
tainment. No country gentleman should be without 
what amuses every step he takes into his fields." Even 
when President of the United States Jefferson had found 
time to express his views respecting the importance of 
turning the attention of a large class of youth to the 
claims of agricultural pursuits. To the learned David 
Williams who had sent him a volume which he had 
written on the claims of literature, he, under date of Nov. 
14th, 1803, wrote : " The greatest evils of populous society 
have ever appeared to me to spring from the vicious dis- 
tribution of its members among the occupations called 
for. I have no doubt that those nations are essentially 
right, which leave this to individual choice, as a better 



200 JEF'FERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

guide to an advantageous distribution than any other 
which could be devised. But when, by a blind concourse, 
particular occupations are ruinously overcharged, and 
others left in want of hands, the national authorities can 
do much towards restoring the equilibrium. * * * 
The evil cannot be suddenly, nor perhaps ever entirely, 
cured: nor should I presume to say by what means it 
may be cured. Doubtless there are many engines which 
the nation might bring to bear on this object. Public 
opinion and public encouragement are among these. The 
class principally defective is that of agriculture. It is the 
first in utility, and ought to be the first in respect. T^e 
same artificial means which have been used to produce a 
competition in learning, may be equally successful in re- 
storing agriculture to its primary dignity in the eyes of 
men. It is a science of the very first order. It counts 
among its handmaids the most respectable sciences ; such 
as Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, Mechanics, Mathe- 
matics generally. Natural History, Botany. In every 
College and University, a professorship of agriculture, 
and the class of its students, might be honored as the 
first. Young men closing their academical education with 
this, as the crown of all other sciences, fascinated with its 
solid charms, and at a time when they are to choose an 
occupation, instead of crowding the other classes, would 
return to the farms of their fathers, their own, or those of 
others, and replenish and invigorate a calling, now lan- 
guishing under'^contempt and oppression." * 

In a valuable report which the aged Jefferson, when 
he had been appointed a commissioner to select a site for 
a State University, — a report which was signed by James 
Madison and by his other distinguished associates, — sub- 

* By oppression Jefferson perhaps had in mind African slavery which he 
abhorred. 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 20I 

mitted to the Legislature in the year 1818, — he unfolded 
at considerable length his views respecting the branches 
of knowledge which could be wisely provided for Ameri- 
can youth. In the courses of study which he draughted 
he did not forget to speak of the wisdom of providing for 
the teaching to American youth of foreign_languages.\ 
With a very large part of the human race one who can 
only speak a single language cannot commune. Only a 
fraction of the human race can speak the English lan- 
guage. This state of affairs is probably a much sadder 
evil than it is generally realized to be by the unlearned. 
Who can picture all the wealth of knowledge which na- 
tions could place at each others' disposal, or the vastness 
of the blessings which could be enjoyed in common, if all 
the members of the human family could intelligently com- 
municate with each other! There have been men who 
have loved to dream of a plan by which learned men 
should be brought together to invent a common language 
for all nations. There have been statesmen who have 
pictured the blessings which will be enjoyed by posterity 
if by wise American statesmanship the whole of the con- 
tinent of America shall be secured to the Republic of the 
United States, — a continent which is to be inhabited by 
many hundreds of millions of people,— and if by means 
of public schools and wise laws a common language shall 
be spoken from the far north to the sunny south and 
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific main. Jefferson 
and Monroe had such visions. At the present time, how- 
ever, if Americans are to enjoy the innumerable advan- 
tages which flow from being enabled to speak some of 
the important languages which are at this day found upon 
the earth, they must be favored with opportunities to 
acquire these strange tongues. Jefferson, in the paper to 
which allusion has just been made, said : " The considera- 



202 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

tions which have governed the specification of languages 
to be taught by the professor of modern languages were, 
that the French is the language of general intercourse 
among nations, and as a depositary of human science, is 
unsurpassed by any other language, living or dead ; that 
the Spanish is highly interesting to us, as the language 
spoken by so great a portion of the inhabitants of our 
continents, with whom we shall probably have great inter- 
course ere long, and is that also in which is written the 
greater part of the earlier history of America. The Italian 
abounds with works of very superior order, valuable for 
their matter, and still more distinguished as models of the 
finest taste in style and composition. And the German 
now stands in a line with that of the most learned nations 
in richness of erudition and advance in the sciences. It 
is too of common descent with the language of our own 
country, a branch of the same original Gothic stock, and 
furnishes valuable illustrations for us." 

It has sometimes been stated, and it is to be feared 
with a lamentable degree of truth, that in some distin- 
guished seats of learning in Great Britian and America, 
the study of the English language does not receive the 
consideration which it deserves. Jefferson did not pro- 
pose that such a fault should exist in the State Univer- 
sity which he and his colleagues were planning for Vir- 
ginia. Among the studies which he urged should receive 
especial consideration was that of the English language. 
He urged at considerable length the wisdom of American 
youth studying Anglo-Saxon. " It," he said, "will form 
the first link in the chain of an historical review of our 
languagHS through all its successive changes to the present 
day, will constitute the foundation of that critical instruc- 
tion in it -which ought to be found in a seminary of gen- 
eral learning ; •■"" * * a language already fraught with all 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 203 

the eminent science of our parent country, the future 
vehicle of whatever we ii6iay ourselves achieve, and destined 
to occupy so much space on the globe, claims distinguished 
attention in American education." 

In the report of 1818 — to which attention has just been 
drawn — it was pointed out that a gymnasium, for the 
physical training of students was "a proper object of 
attention for every institution of youth." Learned re- 
marks were also made respecting the difference which it 
was deemed proper to make between the exercises prac- 
tised by youth in " ancient nations" and the physical cul- 
ture suitable for American youth. One could wish to 
dwell upon the priceless value to youth of wise physical 
culture. But time forbids. It may here be briefly stated 
that Jefferson had a favorite plan by which all the young 
men of the United States would have to learn how to go 
through military evolutions. In the learned letter on edu- 
cation to Peter Carr which Jefferson wrote on Sept. 7th, 
1 8 14, he said, " Through the whole of the collegiate 
course, at the hours of recreation on certain days, all the 
students should be taught the manual exercise, military 
evolutions and manoeuvres, and should be under a standing 
organization as a military corps, and with proper ofBcers 
to train and command them." He felt that at some time 
such training might be especially useful to citizens of a 
republic. 

It might be interesting to especially notice the efforts 
of Jefferson to get able English professors for the uni- 
versity. He proposed that the most attractive of all of 
the features of the university which he was helping to 
found should be the high character of its instructors. In 
his letters he quite often dwelt upon his desire to secure to 
the University of Virginia the ablest of professors. With- 
out here pausing to quote from these letters suffice it to 



204 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

notice that to be a good instructor of youth requires 
sometimes the greatest of talents — indeed, to teach youth 
in a worthy manner may be called one of the highest and 
noblest of arts. A professor, who is what he should be, 
may sometimes be an unspeakable blessing to youth. He 
needs to be possessed of many gifts. He should possess 
at once a certain gentleness and firmness of character. 
He should instinctively cause youth to realize that he is 
their friend and that he possesses treasures of knowledge 
worthy of their respect. He should be prepared by a 
noble heart, and true wisdom, and sometimes by indescrib- 
able characteristics, to kindle in youth elevating, and in 
various ways noble, aspirations, and to sometimes, in a 
most delicate manner, introduce them to sciences, A 
worthy professor will often be enabled to make his in- 
struction fascinatingly interesting, and at the same time 
teach students in one hour more than an inferior in- 
structor could teach them in a day. Youth are thus 
not only saved valuable time but are taught the art of 
studying and of making various researches themselves ; 
they catch a certain kind of enthusiasm and love for 
their studies, when under a less gifted instructor they 
would become disgusted with their work. What a good 
minister, a judicious lawyer, a competent physician is 
to a community so is a worthy professor to the youth 
who come under his influence. He may even intuitively 
and in the happiest manner instil the truest and noblest 
greatness into the character of his students. By holding 
intercourse with such a preceptor the minds of students 
may be elevated for life. Such a professor should be well- 
poised in character, wise in the exercise of authority, 
sympathetic and noble-hearted in bearing, of exact and 
truthful habits of observation, and should be possessed of 
tact and of good sense. He should teach with good 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 20$ 

taste, and should be wisely considerate and patient. 
After spending years of life in qualifying himself for one of 
the noblest of employments, he may have to spend many 
an hour of toil in preparing in a way most suitable to the 
mind of young suitors of useful knowledge some of the 
profoundest of the truths to which they can turn their 
attention. 

It has been realized in Prussia that the schoolmaster or 
the professor is worthy of peculiar regard by the State. 
He is often furnished with a house and a garden and is 
enabled to collect around him many comforts of life. 
When the humble schoolmaster retires from his honor- 
able employment, he is given a pension. But to return to 
Jefferson's labors in the cause of education. Writing to 
his English friend Mr. Roscoe, under date of Dec. 27th, 
1820, after declaring that his remaining days and faculties 
would be devoted to the University of Virginia, he con- 
tinued: "When ready for its Professors we shall apply 
for them chiefly to your Island. Were we content to 
remain stationary in science, we should take them from 
among ourselves ; but, desirous of advancing, we must 
seek them in countries already in advance ; and iden- 
tity of language points to our best resource. To fur- 
nish inducements, we provide for the Professors sepa- 
rate buildings, in which themselves and their families may 
be handsomely and comfortably lodged, and to liberal 
salaries will be added lucrative perquisites." Jefferson 
when bowed with the weight of four-score years wrote to 
his distinguished colleagues in organizing the institution 
of learning to which he was giving his best talents, under 
date of Oct. 7th, 1822, that the university should only 
have " Professors of the first eminence in their respective 
lines of science." He added that " The Visitors consider 
the procuring of such characters * * * as the peculiar 



206 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

feature which is to give reputation and value to the insti- 
tution and constitute its desirable attractions." * 

Without dwelling on the details of the great work of 
founding the University of Virginia, suffice it to say that 
when eighty-three years of life pressed heavily on its 
Rector he drew up a long list of books and arranged for 
the purchase of thousands of useful volumes. It has 
been held by some learned Europeans that amongst the 
essentials of a university, a good library should be ranked 
first in importance ; good instructors second ; and third, 
suitable buildings. It is to be feared that too many 
founders of collegiate institutions have not realized that 
a good library is a very essential part of a university. 
Much of education in its preliminary stages, and even into 
the meridian of life, is the training of the mind to use 
books wisely, rather than to overload the memory with 
the knowledge contained in many volumes. The nobler 
a man's aims the more extensive should be the facilities 
placed within his reach. The world of thought, at times, 
advances. If professors have no means of supplying 
their minds with new stores of knowledge, they labor at a 
great disadvantage, and their instruction does not keep 
pace with the times. The intellectual hermit is not the 
man to teach in a worthy institution of learning. If a 
student is troubled with doubts respecting some histori- 
cal statement, or some fact in regard to science or reli- 
gion, by means of a library rich with the treasures of 
wisdom of the learned his distressing doubts are removed 
and the truth flings its rays upon his mind as does the 
sun, when it shines upon one with refreshing splendor. 
He is thus, in some respects, made mentally strong, and 
enjoys blessings of which he must ever have remained a 

* " Early History of the University of Virginia," J. W. Randolph, 1856, 
P- 473. 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 20/ 

stranger had he not been enabled to consult the shelves 
of a worthy library. The suitor for knowledge under- 
stands how great a blessing it is to him to be enabled at 
times to understand both sides of a question ; and to be 
enabled to form broad and intelligent views respecting 
important subjects — drawing even inspiration from the 
works of great authors. Even in Jefferson's day the 
University of Oxford contained four or five hundred 
thousand volumes besides many thousands of manu- 
scripts. Some of the great centres of learning are espe- 
cially to be praised for their great libraries. There are 
few ways sometimes in which a friend of education can 
do more good to a college than by presenting it with 
useful books. 

Happily the University of Virginia was blessed with an 
English friend. On Nov. 9th, 1825, the aged Jefferson 
wrote a long letter to Evelyn Denizon, a member of Par- 
liament, who had been his guest and had presented some 
books to the university library. After gracefully thank- 
ing the English friend of education, Jefferson alluded to 
the infant Virginian seat of learning. He said : " It is 
going on as successfully as we could have expected ; and 
I have no reason to regret the measure taken of procuring 
Professors from abroad, where science is so much ahead 
of us. You witnessed some of the puny squibs of which 
I was the butt on that account. * * * The measure has 
been generally approved in the South and in the West ; 
and by all liberal minds in the North. It has been 
peculiarly fortunate, too, that the Professors brought from 
abroad were as happy selections as could have been hoped, 
as well for their qualifications in science as correctness 
and amiableness of character. I think the example will 
be followed, and that it cannot fail to be one of the eflfi- 
cacious means of promoting that cordial good will which 



208 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

it is SO much the interest of both nations to cherish. 
These teachers can never utter an unfriendly sentin:ient 
towards their native country ; and those into whom their 
instructions will be infused are not of ordinary signifi- 
cance only : they are exactly the persons who are to suc- 
ceed to the government of our country, and to rule its 
future enmities, its friendships and fortu^nes. As it is our I 
interest to receive instruction through this channel, so I 
think it is yours to furnish it ; for these two nations \ 
holding cordially together have nothing to fear from the 
united world. They will be the models for regenerating 
the condition of man, the sources from which representa-y 
tive government is to flow over the whole earth." As 
Jefferson proceeded he made some remarks on the study 
of Anglo-Saxon, which was to receive attention in the 
university, and which was of mutual interest to Ameri- 
cans and to Englishmen. 

One characteristic of the university which, was being 
moulded by Jefferson, upon which it would be highly in- 
teresting and instructive to dwell, will here be but briefly 
pointed out in the statesman's own words. In his letter 
to his English friend, Mr. Roscoe, under date of December 
27th, 1820, just after speaking of the efforts which were to 
be made to procure worthy professors for the university, 
he added : " This institution will be based on the illimit- ' 
able freedom of the human mind. For here we are not 
afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to toler- 
ate any error, so long as reason is left free to combat it," 

Years after Jefferson had been laid in his grave, one of 
the English professors, Dr. Robley Dunglison, who had 
been welcomed to the University of Virginia, and who 
became especially celebrated because of his valuable 
medical works, — works which are to this day standard 
authorities in American Medical Colleges, — wrote of the 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 209 

aged statesman thus : " His philanthropy was actual and 
active. It embraced, I believe, the whole globe. His 
desire was to see all people prosperous and happy — all 
peoples I may say. * * * He was kind, courteous ; hospi- 
table to all ; sincerely attached to the excellent family that 
were clustered around him ; sympathizing with them in 
their pleasures, deeply distressed in their afflictions. * * * 
He was of commanding aspect, dignified, and would have 
been striking to any one not knowing in whose presence 
and company he was. * * * His expression — as I recollect 
it — was pleasing, intellectual, contemplative. He was 
tall and thin * * * As a university officer, he was always 
pleasant to transact business with, was invariably kind 
and respectful, but had generally formed his own opinion 
on questions and did not abandon them easily. * * * To 
sum up, I had the most exalted opinion of him. I be- 
lieved him essentially a philanthropist, anxious for the 
greatest good to the greatest number ; a distinguished 
patriot, whose love of country was not limited by any 
consideration of self ; who was eminently virtuous, with 
fixed and honorable principles of action not to be tram- 
melled by any unworth}' considerations ; and whose repu- 
tation must shine brighter and brighter, as he is more and 
more justly judged and estimated." 

At last the university was duly opened. To Edward 
Livingston, Jefferson wrote on March 25th, 1825: "The 
institution is at length happily advanced to completion, 
and has commenced under auspices as favorable as I 
could expect. I hope it will prove a blessing to my own 
State, and not unuseful, perhaps, to some others. At all 
hazards, and secured by the aid of my able coadjutors, I 
shall continue, while I am in being, to contribute to it 
whatever my weakened and weakening powers can. But 
assuredly it is the last object for which I shall obtrude 



210 JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

myself on the^public observation." To William B. Giles, 
on December 26th, 1825, the venerable Jefferson wrote: 
"A finer set of youths I never saw assembled for instruc- 
tion. * * * A great proportion of them are severely devoted 
to study, and I fear not to say, that within twelve or fif- 
teen years from this time, a majority of the rulers of our 
State will have been educated here. * * * You may ac- 
count assuredly that they will exalt their country in a 
degree of sound respectability it has never known, either 
in our days, or those of our forefathers. I cannot live to 
see it. My joy must be only in anticipation." 

Jefferson, it may here be briefly stated, although he 
believed that the University of Virginia should be unsec- 
tarian, labored in various ways to throw around the 
students who should reside in the university town, good 
influences. He gave more money than his fortune justi- 
fied him in giving to the support of Christian churches. 
His labors of this nature, however, will perhaps be noticed 
at some length at some future time. 

It of course required a great deal of money to found a 
State university such as Jefferson believed should form a 
part of the school system of Virginia. A rich planter 
might say that he could send his sons to a private school, 
or to a private university, and, that however desirable a, 
public-school system of education was for the common 
people, that as for him he got nothing for the money which 
he was obliged to pay in taxes to support the schools, and 
colleges or high schools, and the university which such men 
as Jefferson wished States to establish. Jefferson, living as 
he did in a State in which was the institution of slavery, 
very probably heard of some such case. To Joseph C. Ca- 
bell, under date of January 14th, 1818, he wrote* :*^*And 

* See letter in full in "Early History of the University of Virginia," J. 
W. Randolph, 1856, pp. 102-6. 



JEFFERSON'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 211 

will the wealthy individual have no retribution ? and what 
will this be? i. The peopling his neighborhood with 
honest, useful, and enlightened citizens, understanding 
their own rights and firm in their perpetuation. 2. When 
his own descendants become poor, which they generally 
do within three generations, (no law of primogeniture 
now perpetuating wealth in the same families) the children 
will be educated by the then rich ; and the little advance 
he now makes to poverty, while rich himself, will be re- 
paid by the then rich, to his descendants when become 
poor, and thus give them a chance of rising again. This 
is a solid consideration and should go home to the bosom 
of every parent. This will be seed sown in fertile ground. 
It is a provision for his family looking to distant times, 
and far in duration beyond that he has now in hand for 
them. Let every man count backward in his own family, 
and see how many generations he can go before he comes 
to the ancestor who made the fortune he now holds. 
Most will be stopped at the first generation, many at the 
second, few will reach the third, and not one in the State 
can go beyond the fifth." ^ 

In the year 1825 Jefferson was visited by Lafayette. By 
cruel confinement in an Austrian prison Lafayette had 
been made lame. Although Jefferson was ill and weak he 
walked to the porch of his house to meet him and to em- 
brace him with tears. To Lafayette a grand banquet was 
given in the imposing university buildings. Some of the 
most distinguished citizens of the United States took their 
places at the feast. Amidst many gay and pleasant re- 
marks a sentiment was proposed in Jefferson's honor. 
All eyes were turned toward the venerable patriot. He 
handed a written speech to a friend to read. In the 
course of his speech he said : " My friends, I am old, long 
in the disuse of making speeches, and without voice to 



J 12 lEFFRRSGN'S IDEAL UNIVERSITY. 

utter them. In this feeble state, the exhausted powers of 
life leave little within my competence for your service. If 
with the aid of my younger and abler coadjutors, I can 
still contribute anything to advance the institution within 
whose walls we are mingling manifestations to this our 
guest, it will be, as it ever has been, cheerfully and zeal- 
ously bestowed. And could I live to see it once enjoy the 
patronage and cherishment of our public authorities with 
undivided voice, I should die without a doubt of the future 
fortunes of my native State, and in the consoling contem- 
plation of the happy influence of this institution on its 
character, its virtue, its prosperity and safetyj, 

«( -K- * % J 2,6.^, for our nation at larg^, the aspira- 
tions of a heart warm with the love of country ; whose 
invocations to Heaven for its indissoluble union, will be 
fervent and unremitting while the pulse of life continues 
to beat, and, when that ceases, it will expire in prayers for 
the eternal duration of its freedom and prosperity."* 

At last Jefferson could feel that one of his great life 
works was completed. Indeed, a noble dream of a great 
statesman was in a good degree realized. He had by his 
labors in behalf of true learning set an example worthy 
of the admiration of every intelligent lover of civil liberty 
in every land ! He had by his actions proved, in a manner 
eloquent even to being pathetic, the sincerity of his con- 
victions of the importance to a republic of universities. 

* "Life of Thomas Jefferson," By Henry S. Randall, LL.D., vol. iii,, 
p. 504. 



IV. 

"OUR COLORED BRETHREN." 

It is well, sometimes, for students of the science of 
government to notice how great statesmen have viewed 
certain questions of great national importance, and to ask 
themselves how some of the greatest and wisest of these 
men would act were they to-day the custodians of all the 
best intei^ests of the American continent. 

A subject of inexpressibly vast importance to the 
people of the United States, to which Jefferson gave deep, 
heart-felt, and prayerful consideration, was one respecting 
the well-being of those whom he called " our colored 
brethren." He formed some far-reaching conclusions 
which are worthy of the most serious consideration of the 
statesmen of modern times. 

Upon the system of negro slavery which prevailed in 
his day in the United States — especially in the Southern 
States — he looked with abhorrence, and with feelings of 
the gravest apprehension as he considered the effect which 
it would some day have upon the welfare of his country. 
In the year I775> having been taken ill while on his way 
to the Continental Congress, he forwarded to his fellow 
statesmen, for the inspection of such of them as cared to 
look at his written opinion respecting America's contro- 
versy with England, an essay, entitled " The Rights of 
Englishmen in America." Some members of Congress, 
less cautious than others, published the essay, and the 

213 



214 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

eloquent Edmund Burke, with some alterations, repub- 
lished it in England. The English Government in 
impotent displeasure placed Jefferson's name on a pro- 
scribed list. In this pamphlet, or book, Jefferson indig- 
nantly declared that, " The abolition of domestic slavery 
\ is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was, 
' unhappily, introduced in their infant state. But previous 
to the enfranchisement. of the slaves we have, it is neces- 
sary to exclude all further importations from Africa. Yet 
our repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions, and 
by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, 
have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty's negative ; 
thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few British 
corsairs, to the lasting interests of the American States, 
and to the rights of human nature deeply wounded by the 
infamous practice." 

At the Congress of 1776, Jefferson draughted the 
Declaration of American Independence, which was slight- 
ly revised by his colleagues John Adams and Benjamin 
Franklin. As I write I have a facsimile copy of the 
original document before me. The handwriting of the 
Declaration may be said to betray especially deep' feeling 
when allusion is made to the last of a series of enumerated 
wrongs committed by Great Britain against the people of 
America. The only words that were underscored in the 
whole document were on this last paragraph. The words 
are so feelingly marked that it is perhaps impossible in print 
to give the force of the emphasis which the writer evi- 
dently intended them to have. JefTerson, of the King of 
Great Britain, thus wrote : " He has waged cruel war 
' against human nature itself, violating its most sacred 
- rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people 
who never offended him ; captivating and carrying them 
into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur mis- 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 21$ 

erable death on their transportation thither. This piratical 
warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare 
of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to 
keep open a market where MEN should be bought and 
sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every 
legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable! 
commerce. * * * " In the Continental Congress there 
were found two men who objected to this part of the 
Declaration of Independence. One of them was a delegate 
from Georgia, the other was a delegate from South Caro- 
lina. The Congress felt that it was of great importance 
that union should be preserved among the colonies, and 
rather than run the risk of separating any colonies from 
the Union it was decided that the whole paragraph should 
be stricken out. The first Continental Congress, on Octo- 
ber 20th, 1774, had signed and promulgated "Articles of 
Association." These "Articles" formed a bond of union 
among the colonies who were pledged by them to 
" neither import nor purchase any slave," and to " wholly 
discontinue the slave-trade." In this bond of union it 
was declared that any one who violated the Articles should 
be pronounced " foes to the rights of British America," 
should be " universally contemned as the foes of American 
liberty," and should be regarded as unworthy of the rights 
of freemen." These pledges of the Continental Congress 
were adopted by colonial conventions, county meetings, 
and by other assemblies throughout the colonies. It 
may indeed have been in part for another reason than 
that of hatred to negro slavery that the people thus acted, 
but it is certain that there were American statesmen who 
hated slavery and were not afraid to avow, in burning 
language, their convictions. Hatred to slavery was not 
confined to descendants of the Puritans. The Assembly! 
of Virginia, after discussing the evil of slavery, had voted! 



2l6 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

I to tax every cargo of slaves, but the King of England had 
V negatived the bill. To an address from the Legislature 
f'of Virginia to the King of Great Britain in 1772, — an ad- 
. dress in which the inhumanity of holding human beings 
in bondage was dwelt upon, and in which the conviction 
was expressed that it was opposed to the security and 
happiness of the people and would even in time endanger 
their existence, — his Majesty replied that " upon pain of 
I his highest displeasure the importation of slaves should 
[not be in any respect obstructed." South Carolina had 
decided in its Legislature that the slave trade should be 
discouraged by taxing the slaves brought to the colony, 
but the Crown had in 1761, negatived the bill. Two years 
after the Declaration of Lidependence Jefferson success- 
fully moved in the Assembly of Virginia that the slave 
trade should be prohibited in every port over which Vir- 
ginia had control. In the book entitled " Notes on 
Virginia," which Jefferson wrote during the Revolutionary 
War — he estimated the number of free inhabitants of 
Virginia at 296,852 and the number of slaves at 270,762, 
or, as he expressed it "nearly as 11 to 10." He feelingly 
^wrote that, "Under the mild treatment our slaves expe- 
rience, and their wholesome, though coarse food, this blot 
in our country increases as fast, or faster than the whites. 
I During the regal government we had at one time [in 

■ Virginia] obtained a law which imposed such a duty on 
i the importation of slaves as amounted nearly to a pro- 

■ hibition, when one inconsiderate Assembly, placed under 
a peculiarity of circumstance, repealed the law. This 
repeal met a joyful sanction from the then reigning sov- 
ereign, and no devices, no expedients, which could ever be 
attempted by subsequent Assemblies, and they seldom 
met without attempting them, could succeed in getting 
the royal assent to the renewal of the duty. In the very 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 21/ 

first session held under the repubUcan government, the 
Assembly passed a law for the perpetual prohibition of 
the importation of slaves. This will in some measure 
stop the increase of this great political and moral evil, 
while the minds of our citizens may be ripening for a 
complete emancipation of human nature." Jefferson was 
to have a far more influential part in the sad drama with 
which the abolition of slavery was to take place in the 
United States than is generally known ! 

In Massachusetts, during the war for Independence a 
State Constitution was adopted by the people, whose 
" Bill of Rights " was so worded that slavery could not 
lawfully exist in the State. It has been falsely said if 
I mistake not, by some uninformed speakers, that the 
Northern States in a very cheap way to themselves 
got rid of slavery, — that they sold their slaves to the 
Southern States. Doubtless for years before the Civil 
War the legislation of the State of New York, and to a 
greater or less extent the legislation of other States, was 
sadly tainted with indifference to the turpitude of slav- 
ery ; and yet it may be doubted whether in the history 
of the great State of New York there are many more 
illustrious incidents than the way it got rid of slavery. 
The State of New York decreed liberty to the enslaved at 
a specified period, and made it an offence to which a severe 
penalty was attached for any one to convey away or in 
any manner whatever to sell out of the State, any one 
held as a slave. If any citizen of New York, in view of 
the day of emancipation, wished to visit the South with 
his slaves, he was obliged to give bonds for their return 
before he was allowed to go, and he had to give an account 
of them if he returned without them. What is true of 
the humane emancipation laws of New York is, in general, 
true of the laws of all the Northern States. Governor 



21 8 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

John Jay, who, with Alexander Hamilton, was an out and 
out Abolitionist — the one being President and the other 
Secretary of an Abolitionist society in New York, — used 
his influence as Governor with good effect in behalf of 
his colored friends. 

More horrible than the most dreadful tales ever told of 
pirates, were the scenes of sickening wickedness enacted 
in the prosecution of the slave-trade. To give even a 
faint idea of the trafiflc in human flesh and blood, an 
account would have to be given of the way in which 
wars were fomented in Africa so that slaves could be ob- 
tained for the slave-ship ; — of how villages were fired in 
the night and the fleeing women and children captured, 
loaded with irons, and compelled to walk sometimes 
many hundreds of miles to reach the vessel which v/as to 
bear them into hopeless bondage ; — of the innumerable 
treacheries and piratical attacks upon the people by 
heartless rufifians ; — and of how even venal African princes 
for intoxicating beverages would sell their own subjects. 
Once on board the slaver the wretched men and women 
and children were often obliged to occupy as little room 
as possible. They were chained to each other and to 
their respective places. In thousands of cases the slaves 
were given as little room as is allowed to the dead 
when placed in cofifins. Lying, in many cases naked on 
bare boards, the motion of the vessel would sometimes 
cause their flesh to be scraped to the bones. At times 
the steam from their bodies would come up from the 
openings in the decks of the vessel as from a horrid fur- 
nace. The slaves would often be seized with delirium or 
with despair, or would lie in a swoon until death, as an 
angel of mercy, would deliver them from their tyrants. 
Did a slave disturb the vessel by sobbing, gags of a pecul- 
iar construction were brought into use. If water gave 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 219 

out on the passage, or, if a storm overtook the slave-ship 
loaded down with its cargo, moans of unutterable anguish 
could not be prevented, or, if, as might happen, a peculiar 
pestilence broke out among the suffering and the dying 
chained in their places, and in some cases to the dead in 
whom dissolution had already commenced, the scene 
would become too woful to describe. For one reason 
and another hundreds of thousands of slaves found a 
grave in the waters of the ocean. One eighth to one 
fourth of the cargoes of slaves may be said, on the aver- 
age, to have perished on the vessels. When the enslaved 
arrived in port they would sometimes be filled with 
agony and terror as they realized that they were to be 
sold into life-long bondage. The horrors of the scene 
would only be exceeded by its wickedness ! No wonder 
that Madison should speak of the slave-trade as an " infer- 
nal trafific " ; — that Jefferson should feel indignant with the 
British Crown for its responsibility for man-stealing and 
the trade in human flesh and blood ! 

It may here be incidentally remarked that African 
slavery was first introduced into South America at the 
instance of Las Casas, a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic, who 
possibly hoped that negro slavery would at least take the 
place of the well-nigh indescribable, — the appalling, — en- 
slavement by the Spaniards of the vast hordes of Indians 
who were dying in numbers which might seem incredible 
if they were here stated. Las Casas, before his death be- 
came to some degree enlightened respecting the unutter- 
able horrors of the slave-trade and sadly repented of the 
error which he had committed in taking part in the work 
of introducing a new system of human bondage into South 
America. It is hardly historically correct to say that he 
was the only one responsible for the infamous business. 
The monarchs of Spain at different periods, had at least 



220 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

to some extent encouraged the introduction of negroes 
into the part of the new world scourged by their tyranny. 
In 15 18, the Jeronimite Order of the Roman CathoHc 
Church had recommended that licenses should be given 
to the people of Hispaniola or to other persons, to bring 
negroes to Hispaniola. From a letter of theirs one may 
infer that even before the year 15 18 they had sent to 
Spain a similar recommendation. Fray Bernardino de 
Manzanedo, sent to Spain by his Order, not only recom- 
mended that negro slavery should be introduced, but 
added especially that as many negro women should be 
sent as negro men.* Although it has been said that at 
least one distinguished ecclesiastic, — a man connected with 
the Inquisition — disapproved of the business, and al- 
though a time was to come when from the Papal throne 
denunciations in Latin were to be uttered against the 
sin of man's enslaving his fellow-man, — yet Las Casas' 
project respecting introducing African slaves was ap- 
proved by powerful ecclesiastics. Pope Martin V. gave 
his approval to the traffic — a traffic which, in justice it 
should be said, was probably but little understood by the 
Roman Pontiff. The Spanish Crown gave to a man 
named De Brasa a license to carry on the slave business, 
who in his turn sold the license to some Genoese mer- 
chants, who were soon unable to supply the large demand 
in Cuba, Jamaica, San Juan and Hispaniola and on the 
South American coast. The trade being found to be 
very profitable, some Dutchmen entered the business. 
On May 22d, 1620, a Dutch vessel landed twenty slaves 
on Virginian soil. In time slavery was introduced into 
all the colonies which were to sever themselves from the 

* See "The Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen," by 
Arthur Helps, 1848, p. 272-3, and " Coleccion de Munoz," tomo 76, from 
which ancient letters are quoted. 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 221 

British Crown. Queen Elizabeth was a partner in the 
second voyage of the first English captain of a slave ves- 
sel. James I. and Charles II. chartered companies to 
deal in slaves. Of the first company chartered by Charles 
II., the Duke of York was President. To the second 
African company which he chartered he as well as 
the Duke subscribed. After the Stuarts were expelled 
from Great Britain the nefarious business was still con- 
tinued. In 1713, at the peace of Utrecht, England in- 
sisted that she should have the monopoly of the slave- 
trade with the Spanish West Indies. The English gov- 
ernment agreed by treaty with the King of Spain* to 
bring into the West Indies of America belonging to his 
Catholic Majesty, in the space of thirty years, 144,000 
negroes at the rate of 4,800 a year, at a fixed rate of 
duty, with the right to import any further number at a 
lower rate. As nearly all the coast watered by the Gulf 
of Mexico was claimed by the Spanish throne, England 
soon undertook to stock with slaves what was one day to 
be the southern part of the United States. It is calcu- 
lated that the English ships transported between the 
year 1700 and 1750, 1,500,000 colored people, of whom, 
however, a good many met with a premature death. In 
1763, it has been calculated that in North America there 
were about 300,000 people of color. The slave dealer's 
profits were very large. At the commencement of the nine- 
teenth century a slave could be captured with often little 
cost to the slave-dealer, or bought on the coast of Africa 
for about ten dollars. A schooner of even ninety tons 
could carry two hundred and twenty colored people in 
her hold — and of course a bigger vessel a larger number. 
Each negro that survived the voyage could be sold in 
Cuba, or in certain harbors of North or South America 

* " The War of American Independence, 1775-1783," by J. M. Ludlow. 



222 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

for five hundred dollars. To make a round trip from 
America to Africa might take about four months' time. 
After deducting all expenses the slaver could make an 
enormous profit. 

In the colonies of North America there were found 
men who boldly denounced slavery from the pulpit, 
and through the press, and for doing so were, by a 
certain class of people, stigmatized "Abolitionists." 
One of these men was Anthony Benezet, whose ances- 
tors had been driven from France by the persecu- 
tion of the Romish Church. This noble Huguenot, 
becoming a citizen of the United States, was filled 
with horror at the wickedness of the slave-trade and of 
slavery. He wrote a book which was destined to have an 
astonishing influence for good. The book fell into the 
hands of a young Englishman named Thomas Clarkson, 
who, being deeply affected by the facts which it made 
public, became one of the most distinguished philanthro- 
pists of his age. His life may even be said to have been 
heroic and romantic. He had had his attention espe- 
cially called to the slave traffic as he was about finishing 
his collegiate course by some one having thoughtfully 
offered a prize for a dissertation on that subject. He 
was instrumental in influencing Wilberforce to take a 
stand in Parliament against the accursed traffic. After 
years of labor Wilberforce was enabled to induce England 
— especially as the United States government had com- 
menced to take effective measures against the further 
importation of slaves into the Republic — to give up the 
execrable business and to appropriate about 100,000,000 
dollars for the purchase and freedom of the 750,000 or more 
slaves in the British West Indies ; — an act which in its turn 
was to have a far-reaching influence for good on what 
was sometimes called Spanish America, where people had 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. ■ 223 

freed their slaves when they, at a cost of perhaps not less 
than a million of lives, cast off the horrid yoke of the 
Spanish Crown. The Revolutions in Mexico and in 
Central and South America were in their turn the means 
of causing, during the Administration of President John 
Quincy Adams, many a debate in the United States Con- 
gress on questions respecting slavery — :debates which were 
constantly to be reopened until the abolition of slavery 
in the United States was accomplished. The Christian 
sentiment against holding human beings in bondage was 
in time to be felt even in the large, wondrously fertile, 
and beautiful island of Cuba — an island whose history is a 
sad tale of oppression by a despotic European monarchy. 
Even to the vast and sunny land of Brazil was to be borne 
a sentiment — which in time was to have its effect — op- 
posed to men owning as beasts of burden their brethren. 
In future from America, instead of the slave-dealer, are to 
go to the dark continent many colored missionaries, who 
have been Americanized in the best sense of the word, — 
missionaries bearing the wondrous light of Christianity 
and its accompanying blessings. 

" Thy chains are broken, Africa, be free ! 
Oh ! ye winds and waves, 
Waft the glad tidings to the land of slaves." 

JefTerson believed that it was not only the duty of 
American statesmanship to stop the slave-trade, but it 
may here be somewhat incidentally stated that, in a 
plan which he drew up for the abolition of slavery in the 
United States, he provided that the federal government ^^^ 

should, at its own expense, educate the colored people. '^ JCX'^"^^ 

When Secretary of State, under Washington's adminis-ty*"*'*' 
tration, JefTerson in various ways endeavored to exert an 
influence against the slave-trade. When President of the 
United States, — at a time when the slave-trade was still 



224 (^UR COLORED BRETHREN. 

held to be a legitimate business by the English govern- 
ment, — he addressed Congress in a forcible manner on the 
importance of providing, just as soon as it could constitu- 
tionally be done, measures to stop the slave traffic. When 
in France he had been invited to become a member of a 
society which had for its object the abolition of the slave- 
trade. Although for prudential reasons he did not join 
the association — fearing that it would not be proper for 
an American Minister in a foreign land to take such a 
step, and that if he did so he would excite prejudices 
against himself which might some time be a means of de- 
feating projects in which he might engage in the interests 
of the colored people, — yet under date of Feb. I2th, 1788, 
to a member of this society, a Mr. Warville, he wrote : 
" I am very sensible of the honor you propose to me, of 
becoming a member of the society for the abolition of the 
slave-trade. You know that nobody wishes more ardently 
to see an abolition, not only of the trade, but of the 
condition of slavery ; and certainly, nobody will be more 
willing to encounter every sacrifice for that purpose." 

One day, in the year 18 15, a stranger called at Monti- 
cello — the beautiful home of Jefferson. The visitor was 
a Mr. Julius Melbourn. Greatly admiring the venerable 
statesman, he had sought from a friend a letter of intro- 
duction to him. A book in the New York State Library, 
at Albany, can be seen by the careful student of history, 
in which there is an account of this visit and the tes- 
timony of Mr. Melbourn to some remarks on colored 
people which Jefferson made to him, — remarks which in 
due time will be seen to be worthy, to some extent, of 
the consideration of a class of citizens found even to this 
day in the United States. The book is entitled " Life 
and Opinions of Julius Melbourn, with Sketches of the 
Lives and Characters of Thomas Jefferson, J. Q. Adams, 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN: 22$ 

John Randolph and Several Other Eminent American 
Statesmen " — " Edited by a Late Member of Congress 
[Jabas Hammond], Syracuse." Published in 1847.* Mr. \ 
Melbourn thus describes his visit : 

" I was conducted to his study, or reading-room, where I 
found him at a table covered with books and papers. He 
rose when I entered and received me with great politeness 
and apparent cordiality. I instantly found myself at perfect 
ease in his presence. * * * There was such strong evidence 
of high intellectual power in his high forehead, and in the 
form of his face and head, that I could not fail of admiring 
him. A philosophic calmness and a glow of benevolence, 
so distinctly marked every feature of his face, that while 
he was reading Mr. Pendleton's letter, and before he had 
uttered a word, I was charmed with him, and loved him 
as an old and familiar friend. I suppose that part of Mr. 
Pendleton's letter, which stated that I was born a slave, 
and was of African descent, excited his curiosity, for he 
immediately commenced a conversation, evidently with a 
view to ascertain the strength of my mind, and to what .^ 

degree it had been cultivated. He inquired of me whether (,i)^^j 
I had seen the building, then lately erected for the Uni- L '■'^ "j^ 
versity of Virginia, and said he intended it should be free ) -' * " 
for the instruction of all sects and colors^ He expressed '. ,. 
his deep anxiety for the improvement of the minds, and.^'t***' 
the elevation of the character of, as he was pleased to call ' 
them, ' our colored brethren.' * * * I remained in the 
neighborhood of Monticello nearly a week, and spent a 
portion of every day in Mr. Jefferson's library, at his 
pressing invitation. On Tuesday before I left these quiet 
philosophic shades, I received a card from Mr. Jefferson,! 
inviting me to dine with him in company with a few) 

* The publishers of the "Life and Opinions of Julius Melbourn," etc., 
were Hall and Dickson, Syracuse, N. Y. and A. S. Barnes & Co. of New York. 
8 



.«^-' 
V 



226 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

friends the next day at four o'clock. I went to his house 
and found there Chief-Justice Marshall, , Mr. Wirt, Mr. 
Samuel Dexter of Boston, and Dr. Samilel L. Mitchell of 
New York. The Chief-Justice had come into the neighbor- 
hood on some business pertaining to the University, Mr. 
Wirt was on his annual visit to Mr. Jefferson, and Mr. 
Dexter and Mr. Mitchell being on a tour to South Caro- 
lina, so arranged their journey as on their way to call on 
the old sage of Monticello. I was announced as a young 
gentleman from North Carolina, — introduced by Mr. Pen- 
dleton, who was well known to most of the persons present. 

"It will be recollected that in the year 1798, Judge 
Marshall was a Virginian Federalist, that he was the 
favorite of the then President, Mr. John Adams, who 
appointed him ambassador to France, Secretary of State, 
and afterwards Chief-Justice of the United States. * * * 
Mr. Dexter was, during the presidency of the elder Adams, 
an ardent Federalist and Secretary of the War Depart- 
ment. * * " Dr. Mitchell was a very learned man, pas- 
sionately devoted to the natural sciences. He had been 
a Democratic senator of the United States, when Mr. 
Jefferson was President. * * * Of Mr. Wirt, I need not 
speak otherwise than to say he was one of the most 
amiable of men. His talents are universally known and 
acknowledged. * * * There was also there one other 
remarkable man from the North. It was Elder John Le- 
land. * * * He was a Baptist minister, who then lived in 
the western part of Massachusetts. He was very zealous, 
both as a politician and sectarian, and was a man of some 
wit. He was the author of a pamphlet entitled ' Jack 
Nips on Infant Baptism.' " 

It was certainly kind in Jefferson to invite Mr. Mel- 
bourn to his table. Little did his distinguished guests 
suspect that their fellow-guest had been born a slave in 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 227 

North Carolina. Mr. Melbourn had told his host his his-' A^f-*-"^ 
tor)'- in the earnest, friendly conversations which they had ly ^ ^ 
had together in the library at Monticello. The talented 
company made a pleasant social circle. One of the sub- 
jects into which the conversation finall)^ drifted was 
slavery. Mr. Dexter expressed the opinion that slavery, 
and only slavery, could break up the United States, and 
alluded to the strange arrangement by which the States 
in which slavery existed were allowed a much larger 
representation in the federal government than were the -ty* 
free States. '-''T'**^'i< 

"'Oh,' said Mr. Jefferson, 'dismiss your fears on thaf^ yKt. v; 
subject, slavery will soon be abolished in all the States.' 

" ' Never,' said Judge Marshall, ' never by the volun- 
tary consent of the slaveholding States.' 

" ' I regret,' replied Mr. Jefferson, ' that so attentive 
an observer as you are, Chief-Justice, should entertain such 
an opinion. I well know that at the time American Inde- 
pendence was declared, no member, either north or south, 
expected that slavery would continue as long as it has.' 

" ' I can well believe that,' said Mr. Wirt, ' for they 
must have felt that the continuance of slavery was directly 
adverse to their declaration, that all men are born free and 
equal, &c.' 

" ' But,' said Dr. Mitchell, ' I very much doubt whether, 
according to the laws of nature, the Africans are not 
formed to be subject to the Caucasian race. From my 
own observations I am satisfied that nature has formed 
an essential difference between the two races, and much 
to the disadvantage of the negro race.* The learned >\ 
gentleman then dwelt upon the brain of a negro and of " 
his white brother and ended by saying, ' If your position, 
that all men are born equal is politically true, it is physi- 
cally false.' 



228 OUR COLORED BRETHREN, 

"■ ' As regards personal rights,' said Mr. Jefferson, * it 
seems to me most palpably absurd, that the individual 
rights' of volition and locomotion should depend on the 
degree of intellectual power possessed by the individual. 
I should hardly be willing to subscribe to the doctrine, 
that because the Chief-Justice has a stronger mind or a 
more capacious and better formed brain than I, that there- 
fore he has a right to make me his slave. But, Doctor,' 
continued Mr, Jefferson, ' may not the diet and exercise, 
bodily and mentally, of a child produce some effect on 
the size, shape, and quality of the brain ? I will suppose 
that my friend, Mr. Dexter, has two sons, the oldest of 
whom shall be six years old, as nearly alike as brothers of 
the age of five and six years generally are. Suppose the 
younger to be transferred to a rice plantation in South 
Carolina, placed in a negro cabin, and brought up with the 
field-slaves, associating with them ; and that the elder should 
be continued in Mr. Dexter's family, associate with none 
but highly intellectual people ; then let his education be 
completed by four years residence and tuition at Cam- 
bridge. Look at the heads and faces of these boys when 
they shall respectively arrive at mature age. * * * Do 
you not all know that the difference would be immense ? 
But to do justice to the negro race, and in order to carry 
out the experiment fairly, we ought to suppose that 
the younger has married a Caucasian slave, and let Dr. 
Mitchell dissect and compare the heads of the great- 
grandchildren of the issue of the elder brother. I ask 
what would be the result of that experiment ? ' 

" * I do not mean to advocate slavery,' said the Chief- 
Justice, — ' I wish, from my soul I wish, it was abol- 
ished.' " * 

The learned judge then with judicial eloquence spoke 

* See " Life and opinions of Julius Melbourn," p. 75. 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 229 

of the difficulties in the way of enacting laws abolish- 
ing slavery, and alluded to how Jefferson and Wythe 
had been prevented from even presenting such a bill when 
they had been members of the Assembly of Virginia. 

Mr. Leland, the minister, held that slavery ought not 
to be abolished, and had considerable to say on the theory 
that the colored people were descended from Ham, and 
that it was decreed in the Bible that they should not be 
emancipated from slavery. 

Mr. Jefferson requested the minister to look at Mr. |- ^"^ 
Melbourn, who it may be incidentally remarked, wasi,.i 
three quarters white. The guests were astonished wheni^-f,*-'*^ jfc 
told that Mr. Melbourn had been born a slave and freed)f>*-*-*\ J 
by a pious lady. Jefferson paid him high compliments, '''^^X- 
adding : " He is now a man of wealth. He has by his i<,>— ^ 
own efforts and industry cultivated and well-improved his /^^V \\ 
mind — a mind which I religiously believe, your mission-*^ '«_-»'*^ 
ary observations, friend Leland, and Doctor Mitchell's' 
dissections to the contrary notwithstanding, is of the first 
order of human intellects." The gaze of the entire din- 
ner party was turned upon Mr. Melbourn — the piercing 
eye of the Chief-Justice in particular rested upon him. 
Jefferson then related to his guests some parts of Mr. 
Melbourn's history. 

Julius Melbourn had been born a slave on a small 
plantation, owned by a Major Johnson, situated about ten 
miles from Raleigh, North Carolina. His mother, who 
was half-white, was but seventeen years old when he was 
born. His young mother was too delicate to do as much 
work as was required of her, so she was sold by a negro 
buyer to be driven to Georgia. The separation from her 
child was deeply affecting. As she shrieked and in mad- 
ness tore her hair and bathed her son's face with scalding 
tears, she was manacled. Her son, in after years, tried to 



2 so OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

solace himself with the sad hope that his loving mother 
had ^xo\y2i}o\y perisJied in the damp and chilly rice-fields of 
Georgia. The boy lived on Johnson's plantation until he 
was about five years of age, when the noble widow of 
Lieutenant Melbourn of the British Navy bought him 
and gave him an education, and his liberty, and every 
thing which he valued in life. Mrs. Melbourn had heard 
in England much about " liberty " in the United States. 
Fascinated with what she had heard of the liberty which 
prevailed in the United States, she had come to the " land 
of the free," there to be filled with horror and indignation 
against the slavery which existed in the Southern States. 
She had a considerable fortune, and had brought to Amer- 
ica a valuable collection of books left her by her husband. 
She had a son of her own on whom was centred her 
affections. 

Although the little slave boy whom she had bought was 
three quarters white and had blue eyes, yet race prejudice 
was so great in the neighborhood in which Mrs. Melbourn 
resided that she could not send him to school. She there- 
fore employed a Methodist minister to teach the more 
than orphan boy. Mrs. Melbourn sent her own son to 
Princeton College, where he graduated with the highest 
honors of his class. There was a noble and beautiful 
young lady, who belonged to a wealthy family near to 
where Mrs. Melbourn lived, to whom her son became 
engaged in marriage. One day when the young lady was 
visiting the mother of her affianced, a stranger rode in 
haste to the house and as gently as possible broke the sad 
news that young Mr. Melbourn had been betrayed into a 
duel and that he had been killed. The widow, learning 
that her only son was dead, fainted. The young lady also 
swooned. This is not the place to speak of a noble 
mother's love for a son. Suffice it to say that Mrs. Mel- 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 23 1 

bourn never recovered from her sorrow, but erelong was 
lying on a death-bed. The young lady, in a measure, recov- 
ered from the desolating blow which had fallen upon her, 
but she was to go through life with a broken heart, and also 
to sink into an untimely grave. The young lady had a 
maid, or companion, who although seven eighths white 
was a slave. She was, however, but a slave in name, as 
she was educated and allowed every liberty, and it was 
her happiness to do acts of kindness to her mistress. Miss 
Laura, to whom she was very much of a companion, 
almost a sister. As Julius — the name given to the youth 
rescued from slavery — approached manhood he fell in 
love with the refined and beautiful young maid, who was 
called Maria. It was arranged that Maria should be given 
her freedom as soon as tlie lovers were old enough to 
marry. As Mrs. Melbourn lay on her dying bed she 
called Julius to her side and told him that she had left in 
her will money to be appropriated for the buying of the 
freedom of Maria should any unforeseen event happen by 
which the girl's kind owners should be unable to free her. 
Mrs. Melbourn also, after providing for some benefac- 
tions, left the bulk of her fortune to Julius. 

" The death-bed of the just is yet undrawn 
By mortal hand : it merits a divine." 

In time a young Virginian named St. John paid atten- 
tions to the young lady to whom Mrs. Melbourn's son 
had been engaged. The young lady, however, did not 
reciprocate his professed regard. Her father earnestly 
used his influence with her to induce the young heiress to 
accept Mr. St. John's hand. At last she yielded to her 
father's wishes and was married. Before long it became 
evident that she had married a gambler and, what was 
worse, a drunkard. Her father, realizing that his daugh- 



232 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

ter had married her dissipated husband through his influ- 
ence, had an affecting interview with her in the course of 
which he bitterly upbraided himself for being responsible 
for his daughter's misery. Suddenly he fell to the ground 
struck with apoplexy. As soon as the old man was buried 
a great change took place in the position of the slaves on 
the plantation. The old man had died without making a 
will. His fortune passed to St. John as the husband of 
his only daughter. Maria's position was especially terri- 
ble, as her dissipated new master had designs upon her 
honor which must not here be even mentioned. He re- 
fused to permit her to be sold. He forbade her marriage 
to Julius. Her former mistress, however, caused Julius 
to be sent for in Mr. St. John's absence, and sent for a 
minister, and expressed her wush that the marriage should 
at once take place. While the wedding ceremony was 
being performed, Mr. St. John returned to the house and 
was infuriated at learning that Julius and Maria were 
about being married. His wife, however, who had always 
been meek and submissive, became uncontrollably indig- 
nant with her immoral husband, and insisted that the 
marriage should proceed. In Julius' hand a dagger 
gleamed, but, happily, the ceremony was allowed to pro- 
ceed. Maria, however, was still a slave. Any children 
born to her would be slaves. 

Mr. St. John mortgaged his wife's property and visited 
Saratoga, New York. He there fell in with some pro- 
fessional gamblers, who won from him all his fortune. 
Mr. St. John, hoping to retrieve his losses in a last des- 
perate move, risked at the gaming table even his horses 
and carriage. He lost ; and was not even in a position to 
pay his way back to his wife's plantation. In the mean- 
while Maria had borne to Julius a son. Julius had been 
<:alled to Princeton College for a short time to settle an 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 233 

# 

account which the college had forgotten to forward to 
Mrs. Melbourn for the tuition of her dead son. The 
creditorsof Mr. St. John at once took possession of his 
wife's estate and sold the slaves and everything belonging 
to the estate. The son of the man who had owned Julius 
cast covetous eyes on Maria. A kind minister in Julius' 
absence did everything that he could to buy her free- 
dom. It was arranged that Maria's infant should be 
hidden in the cellar of the minister's house, but it was 
feared that it would be impossible to there secrete Maria. 
While Maria was thinking how she could hide herself 
until her husband's return, she was seized, manacled, and 
secreted from her friend the minister, and surreptitiously 
sold, and borne oiT in the direction of New Orleans. Mrs. 
St. John had in the meantime sunk into an untimely 
grave. When Julius Melbourn returned he was frenzied 
with grief. He at once bought the freedom of his son, 
who had been left behind the gang of slaves in which 
walked his forlorn wife. He started in pursuit of his wife, 
with the object of effecting her freedom, if that were pos- 
sible. At last, after travelling a great distance, he caught 
up with Johnson, who had bought his wife. Johnson, on 
learning that Julius Melbourn was in the neighborhood, 
went at once, as the law allowed him to do, before a 
magistrate and declared that Julius was born a slave on 
his father's plantation ; he did not add, however, that he 
had since been freed by Mrs. Melbourn. Julius was 
forthwith loaded with chains and cast into a dungeon. 
He was detained until, with the aid and by the kindness 
of the jailer, he could send to his far-distant, desecrated 
home and get written evidence of his emancipation. Be- 
fore the days of railroads travelling was slow work, and 
three months were consumed before Julius Melbourn 
could again go in pursuit of the slave driver. In the 



234 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

meantime Johnson had made haste to ship Maria to. New- 
Orleans. On arriving in New Orleans horror entered the 
soul of the broken-hearted husband gs he learned that his 
wife had been sold and resold until she had been bought 
for a certain plantation by its overseer. On going to the 
negro overseer he learned to his anguish that his wife had 
been afflicted with melancholy, and that about a month 
before he arrived she one evening had escaped and 
drowned herself in the river. Her body had not been 
recovered. Some of her clothes, however, had been found 
on the river's bank, which a negro kindly showed to the 
wretched husband. He found pinned in the frock bosom, 
in the handwriting of his young wife, a quotation which 
ran thus : 

" Shall they bury me in the deep, 
Where wind-forgetting waters sleep ? 
Shall they dig a grave for me 
Under the green-wood-tree ? 

Or on the wild heath 

Where the wilder breath 

Of the storm doth blow ? 

Oh, no ! oh, no ! " 

There was nothing that attached the broken-hearted 
husband to life save his infant son. Full of despair 
young Melbourn returned to his far-off, former home. In 
time he came into possession of the fortune left him by 
his benefactress. He made suitable provision for the 
nurture and education of his child, whom he named 
Edward, after the son of Mrs. Melbourn who had been 
killed in the duel. He made good investments, and, rest- 
less, he might be called a wanderer on the earth. 

As Mr. Jefferson related thisstory, he denounced, with 
great severity, laws which legalized the outrages to which 
Mr. Melbourn had been subjected. Mr. Wirt's counte- 
nance several times reddened with apparent indignation. 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 235 

The dinner and conversation had been prolonged to a 
late hour. As Mr. Melbourn retired, Mr. Wirt, who at a 
later period became a member of the Cabinet of John 
Quincy Adams, followed him into the hall and took him 
by the hand and expressed a desire to continue the 
acquaintance. " I am mortified and ashamed," said Mr. 
Wirt, " that this glorious country sustains such laws as 
those under which you have suffered." 

It may here be incidentally stated that however sor- 
rowful was Mr. Melbourn's after-history it was not as sad 
as was the history of a vast number of slaves. As his 
son approached manhood he sent him to Princeton Col- 
lege within whose noble walls he was welcomed, although 
he had been born a slave. In time Edward graduated, 
and was seized with a longing to visit New Orleans and 
to look upon the sad spot where his mother in her lone- 
liness and melancholy had preferred death to a life of 
cruellest outrage. Mr. Melbourn not only consented to 
his son's making the proposed pilgrimage, but agreed to 
accompany him. In New Orleans the desolate father and 
orphan youth traced the history of Maria. They visited 
the scenes of her sufferings. Her last purchaser had 
been a Mr. De Lisle, who had an overseer, into whose 
possession, practically, Maria had fallen. De Lisle proved 
himself to be a kind old man. The overseer had been 
killed in a broil with a Spaniard. From an old female 
slave, they learned that Maria had wept a great deal after 
being brought to the plantation, not because of the hard 
tasks allotted to her, but because of certain infamous de- 
signs, which must not here be mentioned, planned by her 
brutal overseer. " She was very handsome, and spoke 
with a kind, sweet voice," added the aged slave. As the 
poor old slave showed the father and son where the 
young slave-wife and mother had laid some clothes before 



236 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

meeting death, the son's eyes filled with tears, and the 
father stood like a statue, unable to move or speak. 
Many years had passed since he had for the last time 
seen his wife. His infant son had in the meanwhile 
erown to manhood. But the same love which he had 
ever felt for his wife burned within his bosom. He real- 
ized, however, the hopelessness of his ever meeting her 
again, until that great day when the grave shall give up 
its dead. 

A part of Mr. Melbourn's sad history may be told in 
his own words. " We lingered some time around that 
fatal spot, that last trace of my ill-fated Maria. At 
length entering the carriage we rode about twenty miles, 
and stopped at a small village on the road to New Or- 
leans, where we designed to remain until the next day. 
The evening being very pleasant, after tea I walked 
through the village, which was beautifully situated on the 
bank of the river. In returning to my lodgings I passed 
a small brick building, having the appearance of a 
Methodist chapel. A religious assembly were gathered 
there, and were then singing a hymn. To see what kind 
of people were collected on this occasion, and to wear 
away a part of the evening, I stepped into the house. 
It being quite full I took a seat near the door. Among the 
singers was a woman in the dress of a Quaker, with a 
hymn-book in her hand, on which her eyes were intently 
fixed, whose features forcibly brought Maria to my re- 
membrance. I looked again ; the resemblance was so 
perfect, that, forgetting for a moment the impossibility 
of her being alive, a faintness came over me. It soon 
occurred to my mind that it was an illusion of fancy, 
produced by the scenes so recently visited. I involun- 
tarily groaned audibly. The woman looked up and saw 
me. She instantly turned pale, gave a piercing shriek, 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN 237 

and fell to the floor. ' Mighty God ! ' I exclaimed, ' // is 
— it is my Maria!'' Regardless of the proceedings of 
the meeting and every one around me, I sprang towards 
her and raised her in my arms. The congregation was 
in confusion : some ran for water, others seized hold of 
me, until I recovered suf^cient recollection to say that 
this was my wife, whom I had for years believed dead. 
I caressed her and called her by name. At the sound of 
my voice, so long unheard, she revived and uttered a few 
incoherent words ; every effort was made to restore her 
— but for some time her mind was much bewildered. 
She would cry out, ' Take care ! take care ! there they 
come to take me away ! where is my dagger? I will 
never go alive ! ' I will not continue a description of 
this scene. She at length became calm ; her first inquiry 
after the return of her reason, was for her child. I told 
her he was alive and well, but dare not tell her he 
was so near. Maria fell on her knees and poured forth a 
prayer of thanksgiving and praise. It was eloquent, 
because it was the overflowing of her heart. The whole 
audience joined her, and responded audibly ' Amen.' 
Maria was conveyed to her home near by the chapel, and 
I hastened to seek Edward with the joyful intelligence 
that his mother lived. He could not be restrained from 
seeing her that night, and I returned to prepare her for 
the interview. I will not attempt to describe the affect- 
ing scene that followed. Maria was constantly distressed 
by the fear of being discovered ; and so long had she 
endured life without hope, that it was with difficulty she 
could be made to believe that I had abundant means to 
procure her ransom and that no possible danger could be 
apprehended. The reader can imagine how happily and 
quiet that night was the sleep of this long-persecuted 
being, this victim of slavery." 



238 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

Maria's strange appearance at the religious meeting, 
where her practically long-dead husband met her, was 
thus briefly explained. On the plantation near New 
Orleans to which she had many years before been taken, 
she had been subjected by her brutal overseer to scour- 
gings and innumerable insults. He had taken steps to 
accomplish by force her deepest dishonor. Rather than 
live a life of infamy and disgrace so dreadful that it must 
not be dwelt upon here, she, filled with despair, deter- 
mined to seek relief in death. Wishing that it might be 
known that she had sought death rather than lead a life 
of deepest shame as well as slavery, she left evident indi- 
cations of what she was about to do. She had laid some 
clothes on the banks of the Mississippi, whose turbid 
waters had received many a forlorn slave who had been 
driven by despair and woe to committing suicide. Mr. 
Melbourn in his account of his wife's history thus contin- 
ues : " The road at that place approaches near the river ; 
and at that point is a bluff of land which rises suddenly, 
so that a person travelling the road cannot be seen many 
yards from the place where Maria stood. It was a calm 
moonlight night. She had taken as she believed a last' 
look upon the earth and sky, and ejaculated a prayer for 
her husband and son. At the moment she was about 
to take the fatal plunge, a gig, in which was a lady and 
servant, came in sight. ' Stop,' said the lady in a firm 
voice, 'what is thee doing?' Maria instantly recognized 
the language of a Quaker, having been acquainted with 
some members of a society of Friends in North Caro- 
lina, and she knew that they were not only friends to 
each other, but friends of man and of the slave. She 
instantly ran to the carriage and cried, ' Save me ! O 
save me ! I am a wretched creature who cannot live, 
and ought not thus to die.' In a few words she related 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 239 

to the lady her situation. Mrs. Benson, (for that was the 
name of the lady,) with great presence of mind, told her 
to get into the carriage, gave her a cloak to cover herself, 
and advised her to leave the dress hanging on a tree, as 
that might prevent pursuit. * * * She charged the 
boy, a negro, who scrupulously obeyed her injunctions, 
on pain of her displeasure, never to mention to any per- 
son where they had found Maria, and before morning 
this long-oppressed but unoffending woman was lodged 
in a neat secluded room in the cottage of Mrs. Benson." 

Mr. Melbourn in a sketch of his life tells how the kind 
Quakeress had given it to be understood that Maria, 
whom she caused to be dressed as a Quakeress, was a 
niece of hers just come from Cuba. Maria was not sup- 
posed to speak English, so that she should not be betrayed 
by her voice. The overseer had traced Maria to the 
river's banks, but it will be readily understood that even 
with the help of bloodhounds he could not trace her 
any farther. The poor woman supposed that her hus- 
band, who had been cast into prison when he had caught 
up with the slaves with whom she had been driven to 
New Orleans, was, as well as was her child, hopelessly lost 
to her, or, more probably, they were both dead. Mr. 
Melbourn continuing his narrative said: "I rendered my 
thanks to Mrs. Benson with deep feelings of reverence 
and gratitude. I begged her to accept of some reward, 
which she refused, but I quite forced upon her a sum of 
money. In order that my long-lost wife might become 
fny own property, and that no chances hereafter might be 
left for her last owner or his heirs to claim her, I re- 
turned with Maria to the house of Mr. De Lisle, and 
informed him of her existence, and in a brief manner 
made him acquainted with her history and my own. He 
listened attentively during the recital, and showed evi- 



240 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

dence of much feeling and kindness of heart. I proposed 
to restore him the money paid for Maria, with the inter- 
est from that time, and requested him to make a convey- 
ance of her to me. ' No,' said the generous Frenchman, 
'you have both had trouble enough — I will take noth- 
ing.' I remonstrated with him without effect; he sent 
for a scrivener, and executed a bill of sale of Maria to 
me. On receiving it I could not refrain from taking 
Maria in my arms, saying, ' Now, indeed, you are mine by 
the laws of God and man ! ' She could not utter a word, 
but her countenance was lighted up with a smile, and her 
eyes swam with tears.' " Mr. Melbourn does not fail to 
record how Mrs. Benson, the kind Quakeress, gave Maria 
motherly admonition. She told Maria that she had done 
wrong when she had determined to take her own life ; — 
that, at the moment when she was about taking the fatal 
plunge, God was sending her deliverance ; and that if 
any trouble should ever again overtake her, not to so far 
forget her heavenly Father's goodness as to think of 
taking her own life. Mr. Melbourn and his family, after 
witnessing some scenes of slavery as dreadful as were 
some of the horrors of the Inquisition, went to England, 
where he was treated with kindness and respect. As 
strange as it may seem, Mr. Melbourn, once being asked 
an alms, by a wretched intemperate creature, who turned 
out to be Mr. St. John, gave the degraded being a dollar. 
Johnson, who had done him cruel wrong, in time became 
an inmate of a prison. He had the boldness or effron- 
tery to beg Mr. Melbourn to help him in his wretchedness. 
Remembering the lessons taught him by his benefact- 
ress, Mrs. Melbourn, he returned him good for evil, and 
sent the prisoner, whose penitence was doubtful, fifty dol- 
lars. A slave who had been kind to his wife, Mr. Mel- 
bourn ransomed and gave her employment in his family. 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 24 1 

Mrs. Melbourn ever dressed as a Quakeress. Edward 
Melbourn was furnished with quite a large capital and 
engaged in business in England. Mr. Melbourn will 
doubtless be pardoned for having published some remarks 
contrasting unfavorably the boasted liberty — the race 
prejudices — which prevailed in the United States and 
the nobler spirit which, as a rule he felt, prevailed in 
England. 

It may here be incidentally remarked that Mrs. Mel- 
bourn's kindness to Julius is not the only instance in 
which the heart of woman has beat with kindness for the 
orphan. In Greenwood Cemetery the visitor, on looking 
at one of the most beautiful monuments of that lovely, 
picturesque resting-place of the dead, can see writing 
which in substance reads thus : " Erected to the Memory 

of by the poor orphan boy whom she educated and 

to whom he owes every thing dear to him in life." It was 
to the kindness of a woman that Martin Luther owed his 
education. 

It has been seen, and let the fact be especially noticed, 
that in the account which Mr. Melbourn has recorded 
of his first visit to Monticello, Jefferson stated that he 
intended the University of Virginia to " be free for the 
instruction of all sects and colors'' ; and that he ex- 
pressed his deep anxiety for the improvement of the 
minds, and the elevation of the character of, as he was 
pleased to call them, " our colored brethren." In many 
parts of the United States colored youth are welcomed 
in public halls of learning and hold scholarly fellowship 
with their white brethren. People of all colors worship 
together in the house of God and love to look upon each 
other as brethren. But even to this day, in too many 
parts of the Republic, race prejudice — which may be 
called a relic of the vile institution of slavery, — is sadly 



242 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

evident. Many weighty reasons may justly be urged in 
favor of opening the fane of knowledge to youth of all 
colors. 

It may here be asked : " Did not Jefferson himself own 
slaves?" Alas, it must be answered that he did. Such 
an excuse as he made when he said, " The laws do not 
permit us to turn them loose, * * * and to commute 
them for other property, is to commit them to those 
'.v'hose usage of them we cannot control," could not be 
iccepted by some friends of civil liberty. Prof. Wythe, 
who was one of Jefferson's old instructors and a signer of 
the Declaration of Independence and one of the framers 
of the Constitution of the United States, found a way to 
liberate his slaves, as did General Gates, into whose hand 
the British General Burgoyne had surrendered his sword 
and army. John Quincy Adams even criticised Jeffergon for 
not having, while entertaining the convictions which he 
did respecting slavery, taken a bolder stand than he did 
in the struggle of his day in behalf of the abolition of 
slavery. Adams himself indeed at times acted an heroic 
part in that struggle. He saw it affect in many ways the 
policy of the United States government. He had reason 
to even feel that the fear of new free States being formed 
out of the splendid territory, at present under the English 
flag, stretching as far north as what is now known as 
Alaska, led President Polk, who was too partial to the 
peculiar institution of the South, to surrender the claims 
of the United States to that territory, and that in various 
ways the so-called slave power was the greatest enemy 
with which what is known as the " Monroe Doctrine " had 
to contend. Probably John Ouincy Adams would not 
have criticised Jefferson, if he had known how wonder- 
fully great was to be the service which he was to have a 
mysterious part in rendering his country by his quiet 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 243 

efforts to educate and to encourage youth to view intelli- 
gently the evils of slavery and to war in the most effective 
manner against the institution. One cannot perhaps help 
feeling, however, that when Franklin was acting as presi- 
dent of an abolition society in Pennsylvania and nobly 
petitioning Congress to exert its influence against slavery, 
and when John Jay was acting as president of an abo- 
lition society in New York, — the gifted Hamilton being 
associated with him, — and when men were abolishing 
slavery in Northern States — Jefferson might have acted a 
bolder part than he did. It is, however, but fair to state 
that Jefferson, as far as is known, never bought a slave. 
His slaves came to him by inheritance. His wife also 
owned slaves, having inherited one hundred and thirty-five 
of them. When, in the year 1767, Jefferson entered the 
House of Burgesses of Virginia he introduced a bill into 
the House — and that, it would seem, inside of five days 
after taking his seat — empowering slave-owners to free their 
slaves. When he became a member of the Assembly of 
Virginia during the war of the Revolution he seconded a 
bill to abolish slavery in Virginia. Although the bill was 
not passed, yet he did succeed in carrying successfully 
through the Assembly a bill abolishing the slave-trade as 
far as Virginia was concerned. In a sketch of "Life at 
Monticello " — Jefferson's home, — written by the overseer 
of Jefferson's plantation and published by the Rev. 
Hamilton W. Pearson, it is stated that one of his slaves 
made his escape. It is also stated that on the plantation at 
which Jefferson generally lived, a slave-girl, almost white, 
was born. The overseer states that some people said that 
Jefferson's honor was compromised in the birth of this 
child. He added, however, that to his own positi\x 
knowledge such was not the case, as he himself knew who 
was the father of the child. Jefferson treated the girl 



244 ^^^ COLORED BRETHREN. 

kindly, gave her her liberty and fifty dollars, and had her 
taken to Philadelphia to live. He also provided for the 
freedom and support of other slaves — " humbly and 
earnestly," as he wrote in his will, praying the Legislature 
of Virginia to add to the favors which it had in past times 
conferred upon him, by permitting, notwithstanding the 
laws of Virginia, these slaves to be free. 

Before the death of Jefferson's wife — as early as 1778, — 
Washington had earnestly, in a letter, urged Jefferson and 
some other patriots not to be satisfied with " places in 
their own State * * * but to attend to the momen- 
tous concerns of an empire." After Jefferson had 
emerged from the long and dreadful stupor caused by the 
death of his wife, he had for some time before going to 
Europe served in the Continental Congress. He and 
a Mr, Chase of Maryland, and a Mr. Howell of Rhode 
Island, acted as a committee to prepare a plan of govern- 
ment for the Western territory of the United States. 
The bill, which Jefferson himself reported to Congress, 
contained a clause which provided : " That after the year 
1800 of the Christian era there shall be neither slavery 
nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, other- 
wise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party 
shall have been personally guilty." In Congress, on the 
19th of April, 1784, Mr. Spaight of North Carolina, 
moved, and Mr. Read of South Carolina seconded the 
motion, that the clause prohibiting slavery in the vast 
territory be stricken out of the -bill. Eleven States were 
at the time represented in Congress. All the Representa- 
tives of the Northern States voted in favor of the 
prohibition of slavery, while all the Representatives of 
the Southern States voted in favor of slavery — except 
Jefferson, and Hugh Williamson of North Carolina. Mr. 
Williamson was at a later day held in such honor in 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 245 

North Carolina that he was elected to the convention 
which framed the Constitution of the United States. 
Sixteen members voted against allowing slavery to be 
introduced into the great Western territory, and seven 
members voted against the proposed prohibition. In 
accordance with a rule of procedure at the time in force 
in Congress, the vote against slavery was not large enough 
by one vote to carry the day. What were Jefferson's 
feelings on the announcement of this vote? The answer 
to this question may be inferred from sad lines which he 
wrote when making some written criticisms on an article 
on the " United States " which a French author submitted 
to him in manuscript before inserting it in the " Encyclo- 
pedic Methodique." He thus wrote : " There were ten 
States present ; six voted unanimously for it [that is for 
the prohibition of slavery in the territory], three against 
it, and one was divided ; and seven votes being requisite 
to decide the proposition affirmatively, it was lost. The 
voice of a single individual of the State which was 
divided, or of one of those which were of the negative, 
would have prevented this abominable crime from spread- 
ing itself over the new country. Thus we see the fate of 
millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, and 
heaven was silent in that awful moment ! But it is to be 
hoped it will not always be silent, and that the friends to 
the rights of human nature will in the end prevail." '^ 
Jefferson as he proceeded drew attention to the fact that 
Congress had again taken the matter up. 

About the same period that Jefferson wrote the lines 
which have just been quoted, he wrote to M. de Meusnier, 
who was connected with the " Encyclopedic Methodique," 
quite an account of the efforts which he, and his justly dis- 
tinguished friend Wythe, and others had made to abolish 

* "Jefferson's Works," vol. ix., p. 276. 



246 OUR COLORED BRETHREN: 

slavery in Virginia. In his remarks he said : " What a 
stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man ! 
who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and 
death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, the next 
moment be deaf to all those motives whose power sup- 
ported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow- 
men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more 
misery than ages of that he rose in rebellion to oppose. 
But we must await, v/ith patience, the workings of an 
overruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing 
the deliverance of these, our suffering brethren. When 
the measures of their tears shall be full, when their groans 
shall have involved heaven itself in darkness, doubtless, a 
God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by dif- 
fusing light and liberality among their oppressors, or, at 
length, by his exterminating thunder, manifest his atten- 
tion to the things of this world, and that they are not 
left to the guidance of a blind fatality."* 

However sadly Jefferson felt on account of the failure 
of the bill to prohibit slavery in the Western territory, 
the policy which he had helped to inaugurate was soon in 
part, and ultimately altogether, to prevail. On March 8th, 
1785, Timothy Pickering wrote to Rufus King, drawing 
attention to the importance of making provision for the 
founding of schools and academies, etc., in the Western 
territory. In the course of his letter he said : "Congress 
once made this important declaration, 'that all men are 
created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator 
with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; and these 
truths were held to be self-evident. To suffer the continu- 
ance of slaves till they can gradually be emancipated, in 
States already overrun with them, may be pardonable, 

* Ibid,, vol. ix., p. 279. 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 247 

because unavoidable without hazarding greater evils; 
but to introduce them into countries where none now 
exist can never be forgiven. For God's sake, then, let 
one more effort be made to prevent so terrible a calamity ! 
The fundamental constitutions for those States are yet 
liable to alterations, and this is probably the only time 
when the evil can certainly be prevented. It will be in- 
finitely easier to prevent the evil at first than to eradicate 
it, or check it, in any future time." * 

In the last Continental Congress, the question of estab- 
lishing a government for a large part -of the territory 
which Jefferson had striven to save from being cursed 
with slavery, came up for settlement. On this occasion 
Sout^iern statesmen acted in a right noble manner. They 
were in the majority in Congress and could do as they 
pleased. They unanimously voted to adopt the measure 
which Jefferson had recommended, prohibiting slavery in 
the territory. Thus an immense territory was saved 
from the intellectual, economic, and moral blight which 
ever accompanies slavery, and a policy opposed to the 
extension of human bondage was inaugurated which was 
destined to exert a vast influence on the future destiny 
of the world. Provision had been made in 1785, by the 
Continental Congress, for the instruction in letters of the 
future citizens of this territory. On May 20th, 1785, Con- 
gress enacted that "there shall be reserved the lot No. 16 
of every township for the maintenance of public schools 
within the said township." Thus about one thirty-sixth 
of the territory was at once consecrated to the support of 
its future schools. On July 13th, 1787, the last Continen- 
tal Congress added, without a dissenting voice, to the 

* " Pickering's Pickering," v. i., pp. 509, 510. See Bancroft's " History 
of the Constitution," v. i., p. 178 — a work worthy of being in every states- 
man's hands. 



248 OUR COLORED BRETHREN: 

first enactment providing for the intellectual culture of 
the States which were one day to be formed out of 
the vast territory, the following provision : " And for ex- 
tending the fundamental principles of civil and religious 
liberty, which form the basis whereon these republics, 
their laws and constitutions, are erected ; to fix and 
establish these principles as the basis of all laws, constitu- 
tions, and governments which forever after shall be 
formed in the said territory ; * * * religion, morality, 
and knowledge being necessary to good government and 
the happiness of mankind — schools and the means of edu- 
cation shall be forever encouraged." This Congress also, 
when selling a large tract of land to John Cleves Symmes, 
provided for the establishment of a university in what 
was at the time a wilderness. When selling another im- 
mense tract of land, a similar wise provision was made. 
Washington in a letter dated 19th June, 1788, speaking 
of a colony which was about to settle on one of the tracts 
of land which had been sold, wrote :" No colony in 
America was ever settled under such favorable auspices, 
as that which has just commenced at the Muskingum. 
Information, property and strength will be its character- 
istics. * * * If I -yvas a young man, just preparing 
to begin the world, or if advanced in life, and had a fam- 
ily to make provision for, I know of no country where I 
should rather fix my habitation than in some part of that 
region." When Washington was President of the United 
States he officially, with the concurrence of both Houses 
of Congress, confirmed the great land grant which the old 
Continental Congress had made for educational purposes in 
the Western territory. Out of this territory consecrated to 
enlightened liberty — of which Washington spoke so highly 
— were to be raised many men who were to take a conspicu- 
ous part in redeeming the nation from the woes caused by 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 249 

slavery. The bill excluding slavery from the vast Western 
territory, which Jefferson as chairman of a committee in- 
troduced into the Continental Congress, embraced in many 
respects a policy which Hamilton urged when a member 
of the Continental Congress. It suggested a policy 
which was in time to be championed by such great states- 
men as John Quincy Adams, William H. Seward, and 
Abraham Lincoln. The policy which it embraced was to 
lead to a civil war in the United States, and to the tragic 
termination of slavery on the North American continent. 
The bill by which slavery was to be unknown in the terri- 
tories, which Jefferson reported to Congress, is still pre- 
served in his own handwriting in the archives of the 
national Capitol. Many highly exciting scenes were to 
take place in Congress, and in other parts of the Republic, 
whenever the question of not permitting slavery in new 
territories was to be discussed. When the great and 
angry debate known as " the Missouri Compromise " was 
in progress, even Jefferson, once speaking of the dis- 
cussion in one of his letters, sadly faltered. With plausi- 
ble but fallacious reasoning he suggested that it would 
be better for the slaves not to be confined within narrow 
limits, and that at best not allowing slaves to go into new 
territory would not eradicate slavery from the United 
States, which he held should be the aim of good states- 
manship. 

But to return to the noble labors of Jefferson in behalf 
of the enslaved. In a book which he published when in 
France, entitled " Notes on Virginia," — a book made up 
largely, if not altogether, of letters to the French govern- 
ment, which he had written before his wife's death, — he 
sadly said : "There must doubtless be an unhappy influ- 
ence on the manners of our people, produced by the in- 
fluence of slavery among us. The whole commerce 



250 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the 
most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism 
on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. 
Our children see this, and learn to imitate it ; for man is 
an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all edu- 
cation in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning 
to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no 
motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for re- 
straining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it 
should always be a sufificient one that his child is present. 
But generally it is not suflficient. The parent storms, the 
child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on 
the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose 
to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and 
daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it 
with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy 
who can retain his manners and morals undepraved, by 
such circumstances. And with what execration should 
the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one-half the 
citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, trans- 
forms those into despots, and these into enemies, 
destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patri(^ 
of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this 
world, it must be any other in preference to that in 
which he is born to live and labor for another ; in which 
he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as 
far as depends on his individual endeavors to the evan- 
ishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable 
condition on the endless generations proceeding from 
him. With the morals of the people, their industry is 
also destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will 
labor for himself, who can make another labor for him. 
This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very 
small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And can 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 25 I 

the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have 
removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds 
of the people that these liberties are the gift of God ? 
That they are not to be violated but with his wrath ? In- 
deed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is 
just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that consid- 
ering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolu- 
tion of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is 
among possible events ; that it may become probable by 
supernatural interference ! The Almighty has no attri- 
bute which can take sides with us in such a contest. But 
it is impossible to be temperate, and to pursue this sub- 
ject through the various considerations of policy, of 
morals, of history natural and civil. We must be 
contented to hope they will force their way into every 
one's mind. I think a change already perceptible, since 
the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the 
master is abating, that of the slave is rising from the dust, 
his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under 
the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that 
this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the 
consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation."* 
Jefferson issued a private edition of the volume in 
which he expressed his views on negro slavery. In a 
way costly to himself he endeavored to create a right 
feeling in Virginia respecting this iniquitous institution. 
In a letter to General Chastellux, dated June 7th, 1785, 
alluding to his observations on slavery, he said : " It is 
possible that in my own country these strictures might 
produce an irritation which would indispose the people 
towards the two great objects I have in view ; that is, the 
emancipation of their slaves, and the settlement of their 
constitution on a firmer and more permanent basis. If I 

* " Notes on Virginia," chap, xviii. 



252 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

learn from thence, that they will not produce that effect, 
I have printed and reserved just copies enough to be able 
to give one to every young man at the College. It is to 
them I look, to the rising generation, and not to the one 
now in power, for these great reformations." In a letter 
to James Madison and in another to Monroe, Jefferson 
expressed similar intentions. Madison and Monroe wrote 
to Jefferson encouraging him to give to the students the 
book. Before he went to France — indeed, as early as 
1779 — Jefferson had been elected a member of the Board 
of Visitors of the University of William and Mary, and 
had given much attention to the course of study of the 
students. 

Under date of August 7th, 1785, Jefferson wrote a 
letter to Dr. Price, of England, who had sent him a 
pamphlet on slavery. In the course of this letter, he 
said : " In Maryland I do not find such a disposition to 
begin the redress of this enormity as in Virginia. This is 
the next State to which we may turn our eyes for the in- 
teresting spectacle of justice, in conflict with avarice and 
oppression ; a conflict wherein the sacred side is gaining 
daily recruits, from the influx into office of young men 
grown, and growing up. These have sucked in the prin- 
ciples of liberty, as it were, with their mother's milk ; and 
it is to them I look with anxiety to turn the fate of this 
question. Be not therefore discouraged. What you have 
written will do a great deal of good : and could you still 
trouble yourself with our welfare, no man is more able to 
give aid to the laboring side. The College of William and 
Mary, in Williamsburg, since the re-modelling of its plan, 
is the place where are collected together all the young 
men of Virginia, under preparation for public life. They 
are there under the direction (most of them) of a Mr. 
Wythe, one of the most virtuous of characters, and whose 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN: 253 

sentiments on the subject of slavery, are unequivocal. I 
am satisfied, if you could resolve to address an exhorta- 
tion to those young men, with all that eloquence of which 
you are master, that its influence on the future decision of 
this important question, would be great, perhaps, decisive." 
From the halls of the University of William and Mary 
were indeed to go forth influences in opposition to slavery 
which were to have a singularly important bearing on 
American history. It is not given to mortals to trace all 
the mysterious workings of Divine providence ; but the 
thoughtful historian may well sometimes pause to notice 
how one event has led to another, until a grand result 
has surprised a nation. Could* the world always see the 
grandeur of even an humble effort to direct aright the 
thoughts of youth, or the ultimate effects which sometimes 
follow a noble act, it would see some of the secret springs 
of the greatest and most praiseworthy events of history. 
Among the youth who attended the celebrated University 
of William and Mary — a university whose Chancellor for 
years was George Washington — was a youth named 
Edward Coles. This young man was born on Dec. 15th, 
1786, in the same county in which Jefferson was born and 
in which he lived. Edward Coles' father had been a 
colonel in the Revolutionary war and at his house some 
of the most distinguished statesmen of Virginia were wont 
to visit. Young Coles, after studying at Hampden Sidney 
College, which was under Presbyterian control, repaired 
to the University of Virginia. Among his classmates 
were young men who were to rise to the highest stations 
in life. When the time had nearly come for him to gradu- 
ate he severely fractured his leg and came near losing his 
limb. After leaving college he devoted two years to read- 
ing and study, — going over a wide range of history and of 
politics. At college and in his private reading he ear- 



254 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

nestly considered the subject of slavery. A time was to 
come when he was himself at his own expense to publish 
Jefferson's views respecting the holding of human beings 
in bondage, and to exert an influence which was to be felt 
for many a year — if not, indeed, forever — against the 
spread of slavery in America. 

In the year 1809 Edward Coles was twenty-three years 
of age. He was the proprietor of a plantation and slaves 
which had recently by his father been bequeathed to him. 
He was a young man of high education, of good manners, 
and was handsome. His friend President Madison in- 
vited him to accept the appointment of private secretary 
to the President, a position of much dignity and import- 
ance. Peculiar reasons bade young Coles accept this 
position. He had formed convictions respecting slavery 
which called upon a generous nature to make costly 
sacrifices. He had determined that as for himself he 
would not hold human beings in bondage, nor would he 
live in a part of the country in which the laws were as un- 
just to a large part of the human family as they were in 
the slave States, — even though he should have to give up 
home and friends and comparative wealth. By accepting 
the position to which President Madison invited him, he 
felt that he could, while earning an honorable subsistence 
in the service of his country, lay plans by which he could 
free all of his slaves and provide for their future welfare. 

Amidst the varied duties of public ofifice young Coles 
unbosomed his heart to Jefferson, at the same time 
earnestly and eloquently exhorting him to undertake 
even in his old age to marshal every force at his command 
against slavery, and to inaugurate measures which would 
begin the great work of removing from the Republic 
a feature which was a weakness and a disgrace to a 
liberty-loving people. With great delicacy and ingeni- 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 255 

ousness on July 31st, 1814, he wrote to Jefferson*: "I 
never," he said, " took up my pen with more hesitation, 
or felt more embarrassment than I now do in addressing 
you on the subject of this letter. The fear of appearing 
presumptuous distresses me, and would deter me from 
venturing thus to call your attention to a subject of such 
magnitude, and so beset with difficulties as that of a gen- 
eral emancipation of the slaves of Virginia, had I not the 
highest opinion of your goodness and liberality, in not 
only excusing me for the liberty I take, but in justly 
appreciating my motive in doing so. * * * My ob- 
ject is to entreat and beseech you to exert your knowl- 
edge and influence in devising and getting into operation 
some plan for the gradual emancipation of slavery. This 
difficult task could be less exceptionally and more suc- 
cessfully performed by the revered fathers of all our 
political and social blessings than by any succeeding 
statesmen ; and would seem to come with peculiar pro- 
priety and force from those whose valor, wisdom and 
virtue have done so much in ameliorating the condition 
of mankind. And it is a duty, as I conceive, that devolves 
particularly upon you, from your known philosophical and 
enlarged view of subjects, and from the principles you 
have professed and practised through a long and useful 
life, preeminently distinguished as well by being foremost 
in establishing on the broadest basis the rights of man, 
and the liberty and independence of your country, as 
being throughout honored with the most important trusts 
by your fellow-citizens, whose confidence and love you 
have carried with you into the shades of old age and 
retirement. * * * 

" I hope that the fear of failing at this time, will have 
no influence in preventing you from employing your pen 

* See " Sketch of Edward Coles," by E. B. Washburne, pp. 21-24. 



256 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

to eradicate this most degrading feature of British Colo- 
nial policy, which is still permitted to exist, notwith- 
standing its repugnance as well to the principles of our 
revolution as to our free institutions. For however prized 
and influential your opinions may now be, they will still 
be much more so when you shall have been taken from 
us by the course of nature. If therefore your attempt 
should now fail to rectify this unfortunate evil — an evil 
most injurious both to the oppressed and to the oppressor — 
at some future day when your memory will be consecrated 
by a grateful posterity, what influence, irresistible in- 
fluence, will the opinions and writings of Thomas Jeffer- 
son have in all questions connected with the rights of 
man, and of that policy which will be the creed of your 
disciples. * * * 

" I will only add as an excuse for the liberty I take in 
addressing you on this subject which is so particularly 
interesting to me, that from the time I was capable of 
reflecting on the nature of political society, and of the 
rights appertaining to man, I have not only been prin- 
cipled against slavery, but have had feelings so repugnant 
to it as to decide me not to hold them ; which decision 
has forced me to leave my native State, and with it all 
my relations and friends." 

To this letter of Coles, Jefferson replied on Aug. 25th, 
1814: "Your favor of July 31st was duly received, and 
was read with peculiar pleasure. The sentiments breathed 
through the whole, do honor both to the head and heart 
of the writer. Mine, on the subject of the slavery of 
negroes, have long since been in possession of the public, 
and time has only served to give them stronger root. 
The love of justice and the love of country plead equally 
the cause of these people, and it is a mortal reproach to 
us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain, and 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 257 

should have produced not a single effort, nay, I fear, not 
muchserious wilHngness, to relieve them and ourselves from 
our present condition of moral and political reprobation. 

" From those of the former generation, who were in the 
fulness of age when I came into public life, which was 
while our controversy with England was on paper only, 
I soon saw that nothing was to be hoped. Nursed and 
educated in the daily habit of seeing the degraded con- 
dition, both bodily and mental, of those unfortunate 
beings, not reflecting that that degradation was very much 
the work of themselves and their fathers, few minds had 
yet doubted but that they were as legitimate subjects of 
property as their horses or cattle. The quiet and mo- 
notonous course of colonial life had been disturbed by no 
alarm, and little reflection on the value of liberty ; and 
when alarm was taken at an enterprise of their own, it was 
not easy to carry them the whole length of the principles 
which they invoked for themselves. 

" In the first or second session of the legislature, after I 
became a member, I drew to this subject the attention of 
Colonel Bland, one of the oldest, ablest, and most re- 
spected members, and he undertook to inove for certain 
moderate extensions of the protection of the laws to these 
people. I seconded his motion, and, as a younger mem- 
ber, was more spared in the debate ; but he was denounced 
as an enemy to his country, and was treated with the 
greatest indecorum. From an early stage of our Revolu- 
tion, other and more distant duties were assigned to me, so 
that from that time till my return from Europe, in 1789, 
and I may say, till I returned to reside at home in 1809, I 
had little opportunity of knowing the progress of public 
sentiment here on this subject. 

" I had always hoped that the younger generation, re- 
ceiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty 
9 



258 OUR COLORED BRETHREN, 

had been kindled in every breast, and had become, as it 
were, the vital spirit of every American, that the generous 
temperament of youth, analogous to the motion of their 
blood, and above the suggestions of avarice, would have 
sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved 
their love of liberty beyond their own share of it. But 
my intercourse with them, since my return, has not been 
sufficient to ascertain that they had made towards this 
point the progress I had hoped. 

" Your solitary but welcome voice is the first which has 
brought this sound to my ear; and I have considered the 
general silence which prevails on this subject, as indicating 
an apathy unfavorable to every hope. Yet the hour of 
emancipation is advancing in the march of time. It will 
come; and whether brought on by the generous energy of 
our own minds, or by the bloody process of St. Domingo, 
* * * is a leaf in our history not yet turned over. 

" As to the method by which this difficult work is to be 
effected, if permitted to be done by ourselves, I have 
seen no proposition so expedient, on the whole, as that 
of emancipation of those born after a given day, and of 
their education and expatriation at a proper age. * * * 

" I am sensible of the partiality with which you have 
looked towards me as the person who should undertake 
this salutary but arduous work. But this, my dear sir, is 
like bidding old Priam to buckle on the armor of Hector 
— ' trementibus oevo hiimeris et inutile ferrum cingi! No, I 
have outlived the generation with which mutual labors 
and perils begat mutual confidence and influence. This 
enterprise is for the young — for those who can follow it 
up, and bear it through to its consummation. 

" It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only 
weapons of an old man. But in the meantime are you 
right in abandoning this property and your country with 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 259 

it ? I think not. My opinion has ever been that, until 
more can be done for them, we should endeavor, with 
those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to feed and 
clothe them well, protect them from ill-usage, require 
such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by 
freemen, and be led by no repugnancies to abdicate them, 
and our duties to them. The laws do not permit us to 
turn them loose, if that were for their good ; and to com- 
mute them for other property, is to commit them to those 
whose usage of them we cannot control. 

" I hope then, my dear sir, you will reconcile your- 
self to your country and its unfortunate condition ; that 
you will not lessen its stock of sound disposition, by with- 
drawing your portion from the mass. That, on the con- 
trary, you will come forward in the public councils, become 
the missionary of this doctrine, truly Christian, insinuate 
and inculcate it, softly but steadily, through the medium 
of writing and conversation, associate others in your labors, 
and, when the phalanx is formed, bring on and press the 
proposition perseveringly until its accomplishment. 

" It is an encouraging observation that no good meas- 
ure was ever proposed which, if duly pursued, failed to 
prevail in the end. We have a proof of this in the history 
of the endeavors, in the British Parliament, to suppress 
that very trade which brought this evil on us. And you 
will be supported by the religious precept : ' Be not 
wearied in well doing.* That your success may be as 
speedy and as complete as it will be honorable and immor- 
tal consolation to yourself, I shall as fervently and sin- 
cerely pray, as I assure you of my great friendship and 
respect." * 

* This letter is published in full and for the first time in Randall's " Life 
of Jefferson," vol. iii., pp. 643-5. A fac-simile of Jefferson's letter is pub- 
lished in " Sketch of Edward Coles," by Washburne, p. 28. 



26o OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

Young Coles was not altogether satisfied with the sen- 
timents of this letter of Jefferson's. He wrote to him a 
second letter, in which he, in a manner as noble as it was 
respectful and gentlemanly, controverted some of the aged 
statesman's views. He told him that he felt justified in 
deciding to free his slaves, and that he had determined to 
move them to the territory northwest of the Ohio. He 
stated that he trusted that Jefferson's prayers would be 
heard in heaven and that their influence would be felt on 
earth. " But," he continued, *' I cannot agree with you 
that they are the only weapons of one of your age ; nor 
that the work of cleansing the escutcheon of Virginia of 
the foul stain of slavery can best be done by the young." 
He then eloquently reasoned that aged, wise, and influen- 
tial statesmen could do far more in influencing public 
opinion in favor of abolishing human slavery than could 
men of less worth of character and young in years. He 
pointed out to him how Benjamin Franklin — to whom 
he stated that Pennsylvania was indebted for its deliver- 
ance from laws permitting negroes to be held in bondage 
— had performed grand services for his country when he 
was more advanced in years than was Jefferson. In short 
Coles spoke with the earnestness of a true reformer. 

In the way of carrying out far-reaching plans Coles met 
with difficulties which detained him six years in the 
household of President Madison. He then visited the 
Western territory and made arrangements to settle in 
Illinois, which young State had been formed out of the 
territory in which slavery had been, thanks in part to 
Jefferson, excluded. But business which was deemed to 
be even more important than that of securing to his slaves 
immediate freedom demanded his attention. Madison, 
who was still President of the United States, earnestly 
requested him to perform a work for his country of high 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 26 1 

and far-reaching importance. Coles was requested to go 
on a very delicate and momentous mission to the Em- 
peror of Russia. The Government of the United States 
is so different in some respects to that of European na- 
tions that foreign ministers have been sometimes tempted 
to think that they can take liberties in America. They 
have awakened sometimes suddenly to the fact that in 
some respects there are few governments which insist more 
decidedly on certain observances of propriety than does 
the government of the Republic. The Russian minister 
had made some serious mistakes which had been resented 
by the United States government. The Emperor of 
Russia, not understanding why the United States had 
been displeased with his minister, threatened to expel or 
imprison the representative of America at St. Peters- 
burg. The United States and Russia have always been 
on exceptionally good terms. To America Russia has 
always manifested kindness, and it was on many accounts 
highly desirable that both nations should cherish kindly 
feelings to each other. 

Coles sailed on an American man-of-war to Russia. On 
the Emperor of Russia he made a very favorable impres- 
sion. The Tzar offered to punish the offending minister 
in any way which the President of the United States 
would suggest. After completing his diplomatic labors 
in Russia Coles paid a short visit to Berlin, and before re- 
turning to America he met some of the most distin- 
guished men of Europe. He also hastily visited Scotland 
and Wales. The humane mission which he had to 
perform in America, however, would not allow him to 
linger in Europe, so he hastened back to Virginia. Once, 
speaking of his feelings, he said: "I could not reconcile it 
to my conscience and sense of propriety to participate in 
slavery ; and being unable to screen myself under such a 



262 OUR COLORED BRETHREAT. 

shelter, from the peltings and upbraidings of my own con- 
science, and the just censure, as I conceived, of earth and 
heaven, I could not consent to hold as property what I 
Iiad no right to, and which was not and could not be 
property according to my understanding of the rights and 
duties of man — and therefore I determined that I would 
not and could not hold my fellow-man as a slave." 

At last Coles succeeded in completing arrangements to 
carry out his cherished plans. His property in Virginia 
was sold and land was bought in Illinois. By acting 
promptly and complying with certain provisions of law he 
could take his slaves out of Virginia. On the ist of 
April, 1819, he started from his plantation with all his 
slaves and their offspring — excepting two who were too 
old to make the journey. For these two colored people 
he decided to provide for the rest of their lives. Coles 
possessed to a marked degree the rare virtue of not 
divulging unwisely his plans. The slaves knew not where 
they were being led, but they instinctively felt that they 
were following one who was very kind to them. A part 
of their journey was on flat-boats on the beautiful Ohio 
River. On these boats, which Mr. Coles had bought for 
the purpose, his followers slowly travelled six hundred 
miles. 

Alluding to this journey Coles once wrote : " The 
morning after we left Pittsburg, a mild, calm and lovely 
April day, the sun shining bright, and the heavens with- 
out a cloud, our boats floating gently down the beautiful 
Ohio, the verdant foliage of Spring just budding out on 
its picturesque banks, all around presenting a scene both 
conducive to and in harmony with the finest feelings of 
our nature, was selected as one well suited to make 
known to my negroes the glad tidings of their freedom. 
Being curious to see the effect of an instantaneous sever- 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 263 

ing of the manacles of bondage, and letting loose on the 
buoyant wings of liberty the long pent up spirit of man, I 
called on the deck of the boats, which were lashed to- 
gether, all the negroes, and made them a short address, in 
which I commenced by saying it was time forme to make 
known to them what I intended to do with them, and con- 
cluded my remarks by so expressing myself, that by a 
turn of a sentence, I proclaimed in the shortest and 
fullest manner possible, that they were no longer slaves, 
but free — free as I was, and were at liberty to proceed 
with me, or to go ashore at their pleasure. 

" The effect on them was electrical. They stared at me 
and at each other, as if doubting the accuracy or reality 
of what they heard. In breathless silence they stood be- 
fore me, unable to utter a word, but with countenances 
beaming with expression which no words could convey, 
and which no language can now describe. As they 
began to see the truth of what they had heard, and to 
realize their situation, there came on a kind of hysterical, 
giggling laugh. After a pause of intense, an unutterable, 
emotion, bathed in tears, and with tremulous voices, they 
gave vent to their gratitude, and implored the blessing of 
God on me. When they had in some degree recovered 
the command of themselves, Ralph said he had long 
known I was opposed to holding black people as slaves, 
and thought it probable I would some time or other give 
my people their freedom, but that he did not expect me 
to do it so soon ; and moreover, he thought I ought not to 
do it till they had repaid me the expense I had been at in 
removing them from Virginia, and had improved my farm 
and ' gotten me well fixed in that new country.' To 
this, all simultaneously expressed their concurrence, and 
their desire to remain with me, as my servants, until they 
had comfortably fixed me at my new home. 



264 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

" I told them, no. I had made up my mind to give to 
them immediate and unconditional freedom ; that I had 
long been anxious to do it, but had been prevented by the 
delays, first in selling my property in Virginia, and then 
in collecting the money, and by other circumstances. 
That in consideration of this delay, and as a reward for 
their past services, as well as a stimulant to their future 
exertions, and with, a hope it would add to their self- 
esteem and their standing in the estimation of others, I 
should give to each head of a family a quarter section, 
containing one hundred and sixty acres of land. To this 
all objected, saying I had done enough for them in giving 
them their freedom ; and insisted on my keeping the land 
to supply my own wants, and added, in the kindest man- 
ner, the expression of their solicitude that I would not 
have the means of doing so after I had freed them. I 
told them that I had thought much of my duty and of 
their rights, and that it was due alike to both that I should 
do what I had said I should do ; and accordingly, soon 
after reaching Edwardsville, I executed and delivered to 
them deeds to the lands promised them. 

" I stated to them that the lands I intended to give 
them were unimproved lands, and as they would not have 
the means of making the necessary improvements, of 
stocking their farms, and procuring the materials for at 
once living on them, they would have to hire themselves 
out till they could acquire by their labor the necessary 
means to commence cultivating and residing on their own 
lands. That I was willing to hire and employ on my 
farm a certain number of them (designating the indivi- 
duals) ; the others T advised to seek employment in St. 
Louis, Edwardsville, and other places, where smart, active 
young men and women could obtain much higher wages 
than they could on farms. At this some of them mur- 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 265 

mured, as it indicated a partiality they said, on my part to 
those designated to live with me ; and contended that they 
should all be equally dear to me." As Coles proceeded 
he related how he assured them of his determination to 
befriend them should they ever get in trouble or need his 
help, and of the very considerate advice on various sub- 
jects which he gave them. 

In Illinois Coles received a kind request from his friend 
President Monroe to take the position of Register of the 
Land Ofifice. While occupying this position he was 
always so polite and just to all with whom he had busi- 
ness, that he became very popular, and was elected in 1822 
governor of Illinois. Distinguished men had striven to 
obtain the high station to which Coles was elected. One 
of these men was the chief-justice of the State, and the 
other was the associate justice of the Supreme Court. 
Both these men were in favor of repealing the provisions 
by which slavery was prohibited in Illinois. Another 
candidate for the position was the major-general of the 
militia of the State. Coles was known to be heart and 
soul opposed to slavery. He was elected by only a small 
majority over one of the candidates in favor of slavery. 
One of the reasons why the election was of extraordinary 
importance was that it was proposed by the friends of 
slavery to call a convention in Illinois, so that all laws 
preventing the introduction of slavery into the young 
State should be abrogated. Coles and his friends were 
called upon to fight probably as momentous a battle for 
liberty as was ever fought on the American continent. 

Governor Coles made an admirable public ofificer. He 
impressed upon the attention of the Legislature of Il- 
linois the importance of free schools to a State, and the 
wisdom of promoting agriculture and of constructing a 
great system of canals, by which not only the great lakes 



266 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

of North America would be united with the waters of the 
harbor of New York, but by which vessels could go by 
means of canals and lakes and rivers from the Atlantic 
ocean to New Orleans. His action on the slavery ques- 
tion in Illinois was indeed momentous. He drew the at- 
tention of the Legislature, among other subjects respecting 
human bondage, to the ordinance of 1787 by which slavery 
had been excluded from the great Territory, out of a part 
of which Illinois had been formed. He pointed out how 
slave-holders were ignoring this provision, and recom- 
mended the adoption of wise and effective laws in the 
interests of the oppressed. He also proposed that 
measures should be taken to prevent the kidnapping of 
free colored people in Illinois. As a majority of the 
Legislature was in favor of slavery, a dreadful storm was 
at once aroused. It was determined by the majority of 
the State Legislature that every barrier in the way of Il- 
linois becoming a slave State should be swept away. 
They had on their side the lieutenant-governor of the 
State, but Coles was a host in himself. 

Long and most deeply interesting was the conflict re- 
specting the changing of the Constitution of Illinois in 
the interest of slave-owners. By many and costly sacri- 
. fices. Coles, as the leader of the cause of freedom, strove to 
save Illinois from becoming a slave State. Friends rallied 
round him. Even the Quakers of Philadelphia, hearing 
echoes from the strife which was being carried on in 
Illinois, in ways which were deeply interesting but upon 
which space will not allow one to here dwell, came to his 
assistance. By the press, by tracts on slavery, by the 
voice of itinerant clergymen, and in many highly interest- 
ing ways, at last, at an election upon which the destiny of 
liberty in America may be said to have been determined, 
a majority of the people of Illinois were induced to decide 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 267 

by their votes that there should be no abrogation of the 
laws forbidding the introduction of slavery into Illinois. 

How an attempt was made to ruin Coles in fortune by 
charging him with having violated a cruel law respecting 
colored people when he freed his slaves, and how he was 
saved from paying thousands of dollars' fine — how he was 
prevented from becoming a Senator of the United States 
— how he was defeated when a candidate for Congress, — 
need not here be dwelt upon. Before he retired from 
Illinois and married in Philadelphia he had won a great 
victory for freedom, and had helped to arouse a feeling of 
opposition to slavery in the young and enterprising State 
of Illinois which was destined to find a lodgment in the 
heart of another young man — to whom attention will 
presently be called, — who was to carry forward the great 
work which Coles had so nobly inaugurated in Illinois, on 
a scale which was to be national in its dimensions. 

And now to glance again for a moment at Jefferson's 
views respecting slavery. In a letter to Mr. Barrow, 
under date of May ist, 1815, Jefferson, after stating that 
the subject of slavery had been to him one of early and 
tender consideration, added : " Had I continued in the 
councils of my own State it should never have been out 
of sight." He continued : " We are not in a world un- 
governed by the laws and the power of a Superior Agent. 
Our efforts are in his hand, and directed by it ; and he will 
give them their effect in his own time." He in this letter 
declared that it would be his " last and fondest prayer," 
that slavery would be abolished in all parts of his country. 

Not long after returning from Europe, Jefferson received 
a letter dated August 19th, 1791, from a negro, a' Mr. 
Benjamin Banneker, who spoke feelingly to the statesman 
about slavery, and may even be said to have severely 
criticised him for not taking a nobler stand on the slavery 



268 OUR COLORED BRETHREN: 

question than he was taking. He also presented him with 
a book which he had published— a kind of almanac. 
Under date of August 30th, 1791, Jefferson replied to 
him, thanking him for his letter and his scientific work. 
" Nobody wishes more than I do," he wrote, " to see such 
iproofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black 
brethren talents equal to those of the other colors of men, 
and that the appearance of a want of them is owing 
merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both 
in Africa and America. I can add with truth, that 
nobody wishes more ardently to see a good system com- 
menced for raising the condition both of their body and 
mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecility of 
their present existence, and other circumstances which 
cannot be neglected, will admit. I have taken the liberty 
of sending your Almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet, Sec- 
retary of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, and member 
of the Philanthropic Society, because I considered it a 
document to which your whole colour had a right for 
their justification against the doubts which have been 
entertained of them." The statesman signed this letter 
thus: " I am with greet esteem. Sir, Your most obedient 
humble servant, Tho. Jefferson." 

Writing to John Holmes on the slavery question on 
April 22d, 1820 — a time of high excitement in Congress, 
—Jefferson said : " I can say with conscious truth, that 
there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more 
than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in 
any practicable way." In a letter to Jared Sparks, the 
distinguished author, under date of Feb. 4th, 1824, the 
aged Jefferson drew attention to a plan for the abolition 
of slavery in the United States which he had forty years 
before published in his " Notes on Virginia." The plan 
which he had sketched in his book it would be hardly 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN, 269 

just to criticise in these days, save to notice that the 
colored youth born after the passing of the act were to be 
free, but they were to " continue " — to use Jefferson's 
words — " with their parents to a certain age, then to be 
brought up, at the public expense, to tillage, arts, or 
sciences, according to their genuises, till the female 
should be eighteen and the males twenty-one years of 
age." Jefferson further proposed that the United States 
government should go to other expense in their behalf in 
certain ways to which attention may again be incidentally 
drawn. In his letter to Sparks he enlarged upon some of 
the features of the bill which he had prepared, and then 
continuing added : "I do not go into all details of the 
burthens and benefits of this operation. And who could 
estimate its blessed results ? I leave this to those who 
will live to see their accomplishment, and to enjoy a 
beatitude forbidden to my age. But I leave it with this 
admonition, to rise and be doing. * * * i ani aware 
that this subject involves some constitutional scruples. 
But a liberal construction, justified by the object, may 
go far, and an amendment of the Constitution, the whole 
length necessary." 

To Miss Wright, who was what was called an Aboli- 
tionist, and who bought quite a large number of slaves 
especially to free them — some slave-owners parting with 
their slaves at a low price because they sympathized with 
her work, — Jefferson wrote on Aug. 7th, 1825 : " My 
own health is very low, not having been able to leave the 
house for three months, and suffering much at times. 
* * * At the age of eighty-two, with one foot in the 
grave, and the other uplifted to follow it, I do not permit 
myself to take part in any new enterprises, even for bet- 
tering the condition of men, not even in the great one 
which is the subject of your letter, and which has been 



270 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

through Hfe one of my greatest anxieties. The march of 
events has not been such as to render its completion 
practicable within the limits of time allotted to me; and I 
leave its accomplishment as the work of another generation. 
And I am cheered when I see that on which it is devolved, 
taking it up with so much good will, and such minds en- 
gaged in its encouragement. The abolition of the evil is 
not impossible ; it ought never therefore to be despaired 
of. Every plan should be adopted, every expedient tried, 
which may do something towards the ultimate object. 
That which you propose is well worthy of trial. It has 
succeeded with certain portions of our white brethren, 
under the care of a Rapp and an Owen ; and why may it 
not succeed with the man of color ? An opinion is haz- 
arded by some, but proved by none, that moral urgencies 
are not sufficient to induce him to labor ; that nothing 
can do this but coercion. But this is a problem which the 
present age alone is prepared to solve by experiment. It 
would be a solecism to suppose a race of animals created, 
without suf^cient foresight and energy to preserve their 
own existence. It is disproved, too, by the fact that they 
exist, and have existed through all the ages of history. 
We are not sufficiently acquainted with all the nations of 
Africa to say that there may not be some in which habits 
of industry are established, and the arts practiced which 
are necessary to render life comfortable. The experiment 
now in progress in St. Domingo, those of Sierra Leone 
and Cape Mesurado, are but beginning. Your proposi- 
tion has its aspects of promise also ; and should it not 
answer fully to calculations in figures, it may yet, in its 
developments, lead to happy results. These, however, 
I must leave to another generation. The enterprise of 
different, but yet important character, [of founding the 
University of Virginia] in which I have embarked too 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 2/1 

late in life, I find more than sufficient to occupy the en- 
feebled energies remaining to me, and that to divert them 
to other objects would be a desertion of these. You are 
young, dear Madam, and have powers of mind which may 
do much in exciting others in this arduous task. I am 
confident they will be so exerted, and I pray to heaven 
for their success, and that you may be rewarded with the 
blessings which such efforts merit." 

Jefferson at times pictured to himself with horror 
scenes of bloodshed and dire evils which would take 
place in Virginia if slavery were permitted to continue. 
In a letter to St. George Tucker, who had written a 
pamphlet advocating the abolition of slavery, Jefferson, 
under date of Aug. 28th, 1797, alluding to the pamphlet, 
wrote : " You know my subscription to its doctrines." 
He then, continuing to dwell on the abolition of slavery, 
wrote : " The sooner we put some plan under way, the 
greater hope there is that it may be permitted to proceed 
peaceably to its ultimate effect. But if something is not 
done, and soon done, we shall be the murderers of our 
own children. The ' murmura venturos nautis prudentia 
ventos ' has already reached us ; the revolutionary storm, 
now sweeping the globe, will be upon us, and happy if we 
make timely provision to give it an easy passage over our 
land." 

In Jefferson's day it was dangerous for any one — 
especially in a Southern State — to be known as opposed 
to slavery. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for any 
one at the present day to realize what an excitement 
might be enkindled in Congress should any one criticise 
the moral right of slave-owners to hold human beings in 
bondage — indeed a time was hastening on when senti- 
ments such as Jefferson often uttered respecting slavery 
were not even to be allowed to be carried by the United 



272 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

States mail into Southern States. But the influence 
which Jefferson had helped to exert against slavery was 
not to be lost upon the history of the Republic, as will 
be, to at least some extent, in due time seen. 

At the close of the war with Mexico the United States 
came into possession of an immense territory, much, if 
not indeed all, of which was at the time free from slavery. 
There were men in Congress who claimed that " the 
peculiar institution of the South " should be introduced 
into all the Territories of the Republic. Happily, how- 
ever, there were statesmen who did not agree with such 
views and could not be frightened into adopting them. 
Some statesmen did not care whether slavery was intro- 
duced into new Territories and States or not. Some 
would make compromises of one kind or another. Others 
would save, in every way that they rightly and constitu- 
tionally could, virgin territory from being dishonored by 
the institution of slavery. Jefferson had sometimes 
thought of dreadful evils which he feared slavery would 
bring upon the Republic, and he had thanked God that 
his eyes would be closed in death before the arrival 
of those days of ruin. Some of his worst fears were to 
be sadly nearly realized and for many years new and 
peculiar evils were to hang as a dark cloud over the 
Republic — evils which, if not removed, as will soon be 
pointed out, are likely to yet cause immeasurable in- 
jury to the United States. 

Doubtless there were people of noble and lovely char- 
acters who owned, through no fault of their own, slaves. 
Everything that was kind and noble, that they possibly 
could do for the colored people, they gladly did. But 
Jefferson believed that the effect of holding in bondage 
human beings was fearfully injurious, as a rule, to the 
character of a master. The proprietors of slaves were 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 2/3 

never a large part of the population of the Southern 
States. They, however, formed a privileged class, and 
were — speaking in general terms — bound together by a 
common interest in preserving and in extending their 
" peculiar institution." They at times exercised an ap- 
palling influence on the national government. By the 
census of 1850, the number of slave-holders in the United 
States was 347,525, Quite a large percentage of this 
number did not own slaves, but merely hired them from 
slave-owners. The number of slave-holders who had each 
but one slave was 68,820. The number who held less 
than five slaves was 105,683. The total number of slaves 
in 1850 was 3,200,324. The free colored population was 
228,138. The population of the whites in the slave States 
was 6,184,477. The slave-owners, supported by the labor 
of millions of enslaved people, ruled, to no inconsiderable 
degree, millions of whites. They were a homogeneous, 
compact body, having one great interest to promote and 
one policy to pursue. Probably in no Southern State was 
the influence of what has been called " the slave power " 
more marked than it was in South Carolina at the time it 
inaugurated civil war in the United States. The Sixth 
Section of Article First of the Constitution of South Caro- 
lina provided that no one should be allowed to be a mem- 
ber of the House of Representatives of the State, unless 
he possessed a certain, quite large, amount of wealth, clear 
of encumbrance, or owned, to use the words of the instru- 
ment, " a settled freehold estate of five hundred acres of 
land and ten negroes." The representatives of the slave 
interests were not only powerful in their respective States, 
but could do much towards controlling the government 
of the United States. The slave States were not only 
represented in the national Capitol according to the 
number of their white inhabitants, but also in proportion 



274 '^^'^ COLORED BRETHREN. 

to the number of slaves they contained — each slave being 
counted as three fifths of a human being. Thus the 
slave-owner who owned five hundred slaves had a power 
in Congress and in electing the President of the United 
States, equal to three hundred and one people in the free 
States. In South Carolina — if I mistake not — the Repre- 
sentatives to Congress were not elected directly by the 
people, but by the vote of the Legislature — in the same 
way as were the members of the United States Senate. 
The slave States naturally sent slave-holders to the na- 
tional Capitol. Thus the strange anomaly in a republi- 
can government was seen of the legislative representation 
of people by their masters. Slave-holders, once getting 
the political affairs in their States under their own control 
could so manage them that sometimes, if not indeed 
often, the majority of the whites, even though made up 
largely of tax-payers and of men capable of bearing arms 
in the slave States, would be unrepresented in legislative 
councils. The slave-holders were able to elect more men 
than the non-slave-owners, and thus the States could be 
virtually ruled, not by the people through their elected 
representatives, but by a combination of slave-holders. 
Any statesman who opposed the wishes of the slave 
power was liable to be stricken down. It is related of 
Lincoln that, in a conversation with a Mr. Gillespie on 
some events which had attracted his attention, he said : 
" There were about six hundred thousand non-slavehold- 
ing whites in Kentucky to about thirty-three thousand 
slave-holders ; in the convention then recently held, it 
was expected that the delegates would represent these 
classes about in proportion to their respective numbers; 
but, when the convention assembled, there was not a 
single representative of the non-slaveholding class : every 
one was in the interest of the slave-holders." These 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 2/5 

remarks by Abraham Lincoln are not here introduced to 
re-open wounds which were once cruel indeed, but to 
draw due attention to the fact that the cause of public 
education was sacrificed to a great extent — as were many 
other interests of the whites who were poor — to the 
interests of slavery. The rich planter could send his 
children to private schools. There were indeed some 
public schools in the Southern States — thanks to the 
wise measures which Jefferson, when President of the 
United States, had been led to take, by which an 
immense amount of land was consecrated to the cause of 
public education. But under the upas tree of slavery 
such beneficent institutions did not flourish as they did 
on soil uncursed by the demoralizing spectacle of human 
beings living in a state of hopeless bondage. Among the 
slave population were sometimes individuals of Anglo- 
Saxon blood who had, when children, been kidnapped in 
Northern cities, or had been sold to the domestic slave- 
trader by indigent and depraved whites. In the veins of 
a considerable percentage of slaves, owing to one feature 
of the demoralization often caused by the relation of slave 
and master, there flowed Anglo-Saxon blood.* In a 
letter to Francis C. Gray, under date of March 4th, 181 5, 
Jefferson drew attention to the fact that if a human being 
was fifteen sixteenths of Anglo-Saxon blood, having only 
one sixteenth of African blood, he or she was virtually 
white ; but that, nevertheless, if the mother was a slave, 
by the laws of Virginia, her children were also slaves, 
unless emancipated. 

The slave codes of the Southern States could do much 
towards utterly crushing the spirit of the slave. Who 
will fully describe the wickedness which could be com- 
mitted under the authority of some of the slave codes! 
* See " John Jay on Slavery," p. 144. 



276 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

Extracts from these codes could be given, which would 
amaze and fill with sorrow and indignation a true friend 
of liberty. The pious John Wesley could not forbear 
characterizing the "peculiar institution " as "the sum of 
all villainies." 

It is strange how people under various circumstances 
view moral questions. Many a one, who has perhaps 
known only kind and considerate owners of slaves, has 
naturally felt otherwise than did Jefferson or Wesley 
respecting slavery. The Legislature of South Carolina 
sent as her champion John C. Calhoun to the national 
Capitol. This able man, in 1849, draughted a very inflam- 
matory address to the people of the slave States. The 
address was signed by himself and by Jefferson Davis, and 
by forty-six Congressmen and Senators from the slave 
States, In the course of this singular and very violent 
address on the slavery question, it was declared that there 
were people in the Northern States who were opposed " to 
the peculiar institution of the South," and that the owners 
of slaves were in danger of not being allowed to take their 
slaves into the Territories of the United States, and that, 
if such a policy were allowed by the slave States, it would 
come about in course of time that free States would be 
formed out of the territories, until three fourths of all 
the States in the Union would be free States ; — that then 
the Abolitionists would vote for a constitutional amend- 
ment abolishing slavery, and that " the social and political 
superiority of the white race " was in danger of being 
destroyed, so that the whites would have to exchange 
places with the blacks. In this address it was claimed 
that England had made a mistake when she paid one 
hundred millions of dollars for the liberation of slaves in 
the West Indies, and the citizens of the slave States were 
exhorted, "without looking to consequences," to resort 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 2// 

"to all means necessary " to repel " a blow so dangerous." 
In this address Abolitionists were bitterly and in very 
heated language stigmatized as " fanatics." 

This is not the place to dwell upon the stern boldness 
with which John Quincy Adams and Joshua R. Giddings 
and others in Congress opposed the slave power, or how 
William H. Seward, a United States Senator, contended 
that the struggle between slavery and liberty was an 
"irrepressible conflict," inasmuch as slavery was a local, 
a sectional institution, while liberty was national. Nor is 
this the place to dwell at length upon how it came about 
that Abraham Lincoln was elected to the Presidency of the 
United States by citizens who believed that in all constitu- 
tional ways the National Government should prevent the 
introduction of slavery into new and vast territories. 

When the Southern leaders decided to make the 
Southern States secede from the United States, they 
formed for the slave States a Constitution. In the Con- 
stitution of the United States the word " slave " had not 
been allowed a place, as the name was odious to such men 
as Hamilton and Franklin. In the Constitution which 
the leaders in the slave States formed for themselves they 
inserted the word " slaves." They provided that in all 
territory which the new Confederacy should ever acquire 
— and there were vast territories which it might conquer 
— slavery should exist. They provided, to use the words 
of their Constitution, that " in all such territories, the 
institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Con- 
federate States, shall be recognized and protected by 
Congress and by the territorial government ; and the in- 
habitants of the several Confederate States and Territories 
shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves 
lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories 
of the Confederate States." 



2/8 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

It may here be incidentally noticed that while the advo- 
cates of the extension of slavery were in many respects 
controlling the government of the United States, the 
opponents of slavery were often timid, and easily fright- 
ened by the excitement which followed debate on the 
slavery question. Already a statesman, destined to be- 
come a central figure in history, had attracted much public 
attention. Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, a 
slave State, on February 12th, 1809, — in the same State 
and in the same year as was Jefferson Davis. He was of 
Southern birth, both of his parents having been born in 
Virginia. This is not the place to dwell upon his early 
history. In the year 18 18, Lincoln was living in Indiana, 
a State which adjoins Illinois, and was formed out of 
the rich territory which Jefferson had labored to save 
from the evil of slavery, and in which large provision had 
been made for the intellectual culture of its future citizens. 
It will be remembered that in Illinois, from time to time, 
a certain class of people had striven to have the prohibi- 
tion of slavery removed, and had endeavored to elect 
public officers in sympathy with their plans. The echoes 
of the conflict when slavery was about to be introduced 
into Illinois would naturally be heard in Indiana. In 1830 
Lincoln settled in Illinois. The excitement incident to 
such a strife as Edward Coles had waged in Illinois was 
not soon to be forgotten. It would be difficult to think 
of any nobler leader, or more praiseworthy example for 
youth, than was Jefferson's friend, the cultured Edward 
Coles. By an interesting providence Abraham Lincoln's 
father settled with his family in a county named after 
Coles and known to this day as Coles County. The noble 
impetus which Coles and the men whom he had rallied 
around him had given the cause of freedom in Illinois 
had made its very air inspiriting. A degree of culture 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN, 279 

had bee^ diffused by the wise educational provisions 
which \\x''. been made for it when it was but a part of 
the Western territory, — provisions which Jefferson had 
helped to secure it and which had been fostered by 
Gov. Coles and other friends of education, — which were 
to exert a happy influence upon many a young man. 
Upon a youth twenty-two years of age, open to gen- 
erous influences, as was Lincoln, such influences were 
not to be wholly lost. Deprived in his youth of many 
educational advantages, he when a man earnestly endeav- 
ored to avail himself of such opportunities as he had for 
acquiring useful knowledge. When the capital of Illinois 
was at Vandalia, he was often to be seen in the State 
library. The Hon. Elihu B. Washburne, Lincoln's cher- 
ished friend, in an eloquent paper on Abraham Lincoln 
published in the North American Review for October, 1885, 
speaking of this interesting feature of his education, states 
that " he always read understandingly, and there was no 
principle of law but that he mastered, and such was the 
way in which he always impressed his miscellaneous read- 
ings on his mind, that in later life people were amazed at 
his wonderful familiarity with books — even those so little 
known to the great mass of readers." The use which Lin- 
coln made of the State library when the capital of Illinois 
was at Vandalia, and after the capital, largely through his 
instrumentality, was moved to Springfield, is naturally 
pointed out in the " Life of Lincoln " published by his 
warm friend, the late Mr. Isaac N. Arnold. This able 
writer states that Lincoln, when living at Vandalia and at 
Springfield, " had access to all the books he could read, 
and the world of English literature, history and science lay 
open before him." Mr. Arnold adds: " He became and 
continued through life a student, always seeking and con- 
stantly acquiring knowledge." 



28o OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

It would be interesting to dwell upon Lincoln's career 
as a statesman, — how wisely and boldly he acted respecting 
the rights of the colored people and the interests of educa- 
tion during the eight years that he was a member of the 
Legislature of Illinois; how, as a member of Congress, he 
endeavored, in a way by which the slave-owner would be 
paid for his so-called property, to effect the abolition of 
slavery in the District of Columbia ; how he regarded a de- 
cision respecting what is known as the " Dred Scott case," 
rendered by certain judges of the Supreme Court of the 
United States whose hearts and minds had been, he be- 
lieved, sadly corrupted by the influence exerted upon 
them by the system of human bondage in the presence of 
which they had been educated ; and how he was the 
means of having a platform drafted for a political party, 
which was to be known as the Republican party, in 
which a part of the Declaration of Independence was 
adopted as a living principle, and by which the extension 
of slavery into territory as yet unpolluted by its introduc- 
tion was to be prevented. It would be inspiring indeed 
to dwell upon how, when the representatives of the young 
Republican party were gathered together at a great 
convention in i860, and many of them wavered for a 
moment in adopting the principles of the platform which 
Lincoln cherished, they were gloriously rallied under 
appeals of wonderful eloquence addressed to them by the 
then young George William Curtis, and how Lincoln 
was nominated for the Presidency of the United States. 
Much of this instructive history has been given to the 
world in the highly valuable and interesting " Life of Lin- 
coln " given to the public in the year 1885 by the late 
Hon. Isaac N, Arnold, whose kindly bearing as President 
of the Chicago Historical Society will long be remem- 
bered by his friends. His book is well worthy of a place 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 28 1 

in every American home. Suffice it here to merely 
notice that the pubHc debates which Lincoln had with 
Stephen A. Douglas, who in time became the leader of 
the Democratic party in the Northern States, attracted 
wide attention. One or the other of them was to be 
elected a United States Senator. In all these debates 
Lincoln argued that in all constitutional and honorable 
ways the people should prevent the introduction of slav- 
ery into new Territories and States. With singular ability, 
yet with a mildness the more noticeable because of his 
iron firmness, he revealed to the people a conspiracy to 
spread slavery over the Territories, and even to intro- 
duce it into the free States. 

On April 6th, 1859, Lincoln declined to attend a festi- 
val in honor of Jefferson's birthday, tendered to him by 
some gentlemen known to belong to ''the Democratic 
party." In this letter he pointed out some of the differ- 
ences between the views entertained by Democrats and 
the party to which he belonged on the slavery question. 
He declared that, " Soberly, it is now no child's play to 
save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this 
nation. * * * This is a world of compensations ; and 
he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. 
Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for 
themselves; and under a just God cannot long retain it." 
Lincoln added : " All honor to Jefferson ; to a man who, 
in the concrete pressure of a struggle for a national inde- 
pendence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and 
capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary docu- 
ment an abstract of truth, applicable to all men and all 
times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day and in all 
coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block 
to the harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression." 

On the 27th of February, i860, Lincoln, in a speech 



282 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

delivered in New York, examined critically the history of 
the framers of the Constitution of the United States in 
relation to slavery, and showed that Washington and an 
astonishing number of his colleagues, whose history could 
be traced, acted on the principle that slavery should not 
be introduced into new Territories. Lincoln submitted to 
the calm reflection of the people whether much that was 
said about the party to which he belonged was just. He 
alluded to the celebrated decision rendered by a majority 
of the judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
known as the Dred Scott case, by which slavery was to 
be permitted, however offensive to some of the States, in 
all the States and Territories of the national Republic, 
and explained some of his own views respecting the de- 
cision. On July 17th, 1858, he had startled Stephen A. 
Douglas by reading a letter which Jefferson had written 
on September 28th, 1820, in which sentiments respecting 
the authority of the Supreme Court of the United States 
were enunciated somewhat similar to certain views which 
Douglas affected to condemn. Indeed, in a celebrated 
speech delivered in New York, Lincoln betrayed a very 
praiseworthy acquaintance with American history. 

At the election for President of the United States in 
i860, Douglas, the candidate of the Democrats of the 
Northern States, received in the Electoral College 12 
votes ; Breckenridge, the slavery candidate, 72 votes ; Mr. 
Bell, who was supposed to be in favor of the States re- 
maining united whether slavery was extended or not, 
received 39 votes; Lincoln received 180 votes, — more 
votes in the Electoral College than was given to all the 
other candidates united. 

Shortly after his election to the Presidency Lincoln 
made a speech in Cincinnati, a part of which was especially 
addressed to the slave State in which he had been born 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 283 

He said : " We mean to treat, as near as we possibly can, 
as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison treated you. We 
mean to leave you alone and in no wise to interfere with* 
your institutions, to abide by all and every compromise 
of the Constitution ; and in a word, coming back to the 
original proposition, to treat you as far as degenerate 
men, if we have degenerated, may, according to the ex- 
amples of those noble fathers Washington, Jefferson, and 
Madison." As he continued, Lincoln spoke in the most 
generous manner of the people of the slave States, reared 
under different circumstances than were the people of 
the free States, but possessed, he declared, of as much 
goodness of heart as he claimed for himself. It would 
perhaps be impossible to find a more generous-hearted 
statesman than Lincoln, by his speeches, showed himself 
to be. 

In his inaugural address Lincoln said : " One section 
of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be 
extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought 
not to be extended ; and this is the only substantial dis- 
pute ; and the fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution 
and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave-trade, 
are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can be in a 
community where the moral sense of the people imper- 
fectly supports the law itself." 

It might be interesting to here turn for a moment from 
Abraham Lincoln to the leaders in the slave States who 
had formed a Confederacy among themselves. In this 
Confederacy Jefferson Davis was elected President and 
Alexander H. Stephens Vice-President. Shortly after his 
election Mr, Stephens made a speech in Savannah in 
which he said : 

" The new Constitution has put at rest forever all 
agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — 



284 OUR COLORED BRETHREN: 

African slavery, as it exists among us — the proper status 
of the negro in our form of civilization. This was 
• the immediate cause of the late rupture and present 
revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated 
this, as the ' rock upon which the old Union would 
split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is 
now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended 
the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, 
may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by 
him, and most of the leading statesmen at the time of 
the formation of the old Constitution, were, that the en- 
slavement of the African was in violation of the laws of 
nature ; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, 
and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to 
deal with ; but the general opinion of the men of that day 
was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, 
the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This 
idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was 
the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is 
true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution 
while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly 
used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, 
because of the common sentiment of the day. Those 
ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested 
upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was 
an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a 
government built upon it was wrong — when the ' storm 
came and the wind blew, it fell.' 

" Our new government is founded upon exactly the 
opposite ideas ; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone 
rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to 
the white man ; that slavery, subordination to the superior 
race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new 
government, is the first in the history of the world, based 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 285 

upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. 
This truth has been slow in the process of its develop- 
ment, like all other truths in the various departments of 
science. It is even so amongst us. Many who hear me, 
perhaps, can recollect well that this truth Avas not gen- 
erally admitted even within their day. The errors of the 
past generations still clung to many as late as twenty 
years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these 
errors with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate 
fanatics." 

Mr. Stephens, after calling for some time people who 
he confessed looked upon slavery as did JelTerson 
fanatics, stated that he could not allow himself to doubt 
the ultimate recognition of the view taken of slavery by 
the Confederate government, *' throughout the civilized 
and enlightened world." In January, 1863, Jefferson 
Davis, in a message to the Congress of the Confederate 
States, spoke wnth bitterness of the United States. Al- 
luding to Lincoln's proclamation emancipating the slaves 
of all States in arms against the United States Govern- 
ment, he said : " We may well leave it to the instinct of 
that common humanity which a beneficent Creator has 
implanted in the breasts of our fellow-men of all countries, 
to pass judgment on a measure by which several millions 
of human beings of an inferior race — peaceful, contented 
laborers in their sphere — are doomed to extermination, 
while at the same time they are encouraged to a general 
assassination of their masters by the insidious recommen- 
dation ' to abstain from violence, unless in necessary self- 
defence.' " ^ 

Turning from advocates of slavery to Lincoln, it may 
here be noticed that at his second election, which took 
place when men's feelings were naturally somewhat 
heated by the Civil War, he received 3,604,474 more votes 



286 ■ OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

than was received by his distinguished opponent, General 
George B. McClellan. In his second inaugural address 
Abraham Lincoln sadly said : 

" One-eighth of the whole population were colored 
slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but 
localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves con- 
stituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that 
this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To 
strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the 
object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by 
war, while the Government claimed no right to do more 
than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. 

" Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or 
the duration which it has already attained. Neither 
anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease even 
before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for 
an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and 
astounding. 

"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, 
and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem 
strange that any men should dare to ask God's assistance 
in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's 
faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The 
prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither 
has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own 
purposes. Woe unto the world because of offences, for 
it must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man 
by whom the offence cometh ! If we shall suppose that 
African slavery is one of these offences which, in the 
providence of God, must needs come, but which having 
continued through His appointed time. He now wills to 
remove, and that He gives to both North and South this 
terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence 
came, shall we discern there any departures from those 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 28/ 

Divine attributes which the believers in a living God 
always ascribe to him ? Fondly do we hope, fervently 
do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily 
pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the 
wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty 
years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every 
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by 
another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand 
years ago, so, still it must be said that the judgm.ents of 
the Lord are true and righteous altogether. 

" With malice towards none, with charity for all, with 
firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let 
us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's 
wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, 
and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may 
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among our- 
selves and with all nations." 

Lincoln, if lacking in some respects the education 
which could justly be desired for a President of the great 
Republic of the New World, yet was learned to no ordinary 
degree in certain parts of American history. He had for 
years been a member of the Legislature of Illinois. By 
a very wise arrangement worthy of the highest praise 
every State has a library at its capital. Often might 
Lincoln have been seen with noble industry earnestly 
consulting the Illinois State library, and thus, uncon- 
sciously perhaps, fitting himself to act a grand part in the 
drama of history. He possessed many virtues, not the 
least of which was his firm devotion to his country. 
He possessed, one may almost say, a giant's strength, 
physically and mentally. Many, if not indeed all, of his 
State papers breathe a spirit which may well fill one with 
wonder when the circumstances under which they were 
written are borne in mind. He surrounded himself with 
singularly able counsellors. 



288 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

With Jefferson and Madison and Clay and many other 
distinguished statesmen, Lincoln at one time entertained 
the idea that one way to abolish slavery was to colonize 
the colored people somewhere where they could govern 
themselves. Jefferson, when President of the United 
States, in a letter to Monroe dated November 24th, 1801, 
discussed a plan by which the United States should buy 
somewhere land for the colored people and should let 
them, for various reasons, live by themselves. He said: 
" However our present interests may restrain us within 
our own limits, it is impossible not to look forward to 
distant times, when our rapid multiplication will extend 
itself beyond those limits, and cover the whole northern, 
if not southern continent, with a people speaking the 
same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar 
laws ; nor can we contemplate with satisfaction either 
blot or mixture on that surface." JefTerson then spoke 
of the advantages of the West Indies as a place of retreat 
for the colored people. In a long letter to Jared Sparks, 
under date of February 4th, 1824, Jefferson argued that 
the proceeds of the public lands should be devoted to the 
abolition of slavery. He claimed that while the measure 
was "more important to the slave States," yet that it 
was "highly so to the others also." He said that "a 
liberal construction of the Constitution, justified by the 
object," would enable the United States to do much 
towards abolishing slavery, " and an amendment to the 
Constitution the whole length necessary " to accomplish 
the beneficial purpose. It may here be noticed that 
Madison and Chief-Justice Marshall were desirous of 
seeing the proceeds of the public lands applied to the 
emancipation of slavery. In a letter to Robert J. Evans, 
June 15th, 1819, Madison said : 

" It is the peculiar fortune, or, rather, a providential 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 289 

blessing of the United States, to possess a resource com- 
mensurate to this great object, without taxes on the 
people, or even an increase of the public debt. 

" I allude to the vacant territory, the extent of which is 
so vast, and the vendible value of which is so well ascer- 
tained." 

Madison made a calculation of the number of acres 
which would sufifice to appropriate for the purpose. He 
then said ; " And to what object so good, so great, and 
so glorious, could that peculiar fund of wealth be appro- 
priated ? Whilst the sale of territory would, on one hand, 
be planting one desert with a free and civilized people, it 
would, on the other, be giving freedom to another people, 
and filling with them another desert. And if in any 
instances wrong has been done by our forefathers to 
people of one color, by dispossessing them of their soil, 
what better atonement is now in our power than that of 
making what is rightfully acquired a source of justice and 
of blessings to a people of another color ? " As Madison 
continued he thus argued : " No particular difficulty is 
foreseen from that portion of the nation which, with a 
common interest in the vacant territory, has no interest 
in slave property. They are too just to wish that a par- 
tial sacrifice should be made for the general good. * * * 
That part of the nation has, indeed, shewn a meritorious 
alacrity in promoting, by pecuniary contributions, the 
limited scheme for colonizing the blacks, and freeing the 
nation from the unfortunate stain on it, which justifies the 
belief that any enlargement of the scheme, if founded on 
just principles, would find among them its earliest and 
warmest patrons. It ought to have great weight that the 
vacant lands in question have, for the most part, been de- 
rived from grants of the States holding the slaves, to be 
redeemed and removed by the sale of them." 
10 



290 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

Madison did not maintain that the national govern- 
ment could purchase the slaves unless the people would 
agree to its so doing, but he did not doubt that the nation 
had the power, if it had the inclination, to bring about 
" the great object in question." Under date of March 
20th, 1820, in a letter to Tench Coxe, he said : " I have 
long thought that our vacant territory was the resource 
which, in some way or other, was most applicable and 
adequate as a gradual cure for the portentous evil, with- 
out, however, being unaware that even that would en- 
counter serious difficulties of different sorts." The 
words of Jefferson and Madison, which have here been 
presented, give some faint idea'of the sacrifices — estimated 
at hundreds of millions of dollars — which they wished the 
Republic to make rather than to permit slavery to con- 
tinue to exist in the United States. 

Lincoln, for years, if not indeed to his death, held the 
idea that it would be wise, for various reasons, for the 
United States to aid emancipated colored people to col- 
onize some part of the world beyond the limits of the 
United States. In the early part of the Civil War Congress 
also entertained this opinion, and made an appropriation 
with which to buy such a territory. Lincoln selected a 
part of New Granada, known as the Chiriqui Lagoon. As 
I write I have before me an English volume written by 
Commander Bedford Pim of the Royal Navy, during the 
United States Civil War. The book is entitled " The 
Gate of the Pacific." In this work Commander Pim, who 
had spent considerable time on the coast of Central 
America, in language which at times may well cause an 
American to feel highly indignant, urges the English 
government to take advantage of the struggle in which 
the United States was engaged, to put to silence the 
" Monroe Doctrine " of the " Yankees" — as he stigma- 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 29 1 

tizes the people of the United States, — by seizing the 
magnificent territory for England. He speaks with rap- 
ture of the gorgeous territory and of its splendid harbors. 
Alluding in a characteristic manner to the Anglo-Saxon 
Republic, he gives, in order to enlighten, and arouse to 
opposition, his own government, a speech delivered by 
Abraham Lincoln on August 14th, 1862, to a deputation of 
colored people who made him a visit. In the course of 
his speech Lincoln said : " Your race are suffering, in my 
opinion, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. * * * 
See our present condition ; — the country is engaged in 
war ; our white men cutting one another's throats, none 
knowing how far it will extend ; — and then consider what 
we know to be the truth. But for your race among 
us there could not be a war. Although many men en- 
gaged on either side do not care for you one way or the 
other, nevertheless I repeat, without the institution of 
slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could have 
no existence." Lincoln then argued that if the colored 
people who were already freed and were in some degree 
intelligent would found a new colony — a colony which 
would offer an asylum to the colored people who from 
time to time would obtain their freedom, — the colonists 
could feel a nobility of purpose something like unto that 
which animated Washington when he went through the 
hardships of the War of Independence. Lincoln then, 
speaking of the American colony at Liberia, said : '* The 
question is. If the colored people are persuaded to 
go anywhere, why not there? One reason for an un- 
willingness to do so is, that some . of you would 
rather remain within reach of the country of your nativity. 
* * * The place I am thinking about for a colony is 
Central America. It is nearer us than Liberia — not more 
than one-fourth as far as Liberia — and within seven days* 



292 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

run by steamers. Unlike Liberia, it is on a great line of 
travel — it is a highway. The country is a very excellent 
one for any people, and with great natural resources and 
advantages. * * * The particular place I have in view is 
to be a great highway from the Atlantic or Carribean Sea 
to the Pacific Ocean ; and this particular place has all the 
advantages of a colony. On both sides there are harbors 
among the first in the world. Again there are evidences 
of very rich coal-mines. A certain amount of coal is 
valuable in any country, and there may be more than 
enough for the wants of the country. * * * I shall, if I 
get a sufficient number of you engaged, have provision 
made that you shall not be wronged. If you will engage 
in the enterprise, I will spend some of the money 
entrusted to me. I am sure you will succeed. * * * 
Besides I would endeavor to have you made equals, and 
have the best assurance that you would be made equals 
of the best. The practical thing I want to ascertain is 
whether I can get a number of able-bodied men, with 
their wives and children, who are willing to go when 
I present evidence of encouragement and protection. 
Could I get a number of tolerably intelligent men with 
their wives and children, I think I could make a successful 
commencement." Lincoln, as he concluded his address, 
said that the scheme was fraught with consequences 
not confined to the present generation, but extended to 
distant times, as 

" From age to age descends the lay, 
To millions yet to be, 
Till far its echoes roll away 
Into eternity." 

Commander Pirn, after giving this speech in full, pre- 
sents a circular which was issued to colored men upon the 
proposed colonization enterprise. The following sentence 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN^ 293 

from this circular will give an idea of its purpose : " If 
this travail and pain of the nation become the birthday 
of your freedom, let us plant you free and independent 
beyond the reach of the power that has oppressed you." 
Events of such a nature occurred that the plan of found- 
ing a colony in New Granada was not carried out. More- 
over, a certain infamous treaty, which I may be enabled 
at some future time to show embraced a policy for which 
slavery was responsible, known as the Clayton-Bulwer 
treaty, forbade the United States forever and forever from 
colonizing or annexing the country, even though the 
people should request the United States to permit them 
to become a part of the Republic, as Nicaragua once did, 
when the slave power in Congress defeated the beneficent 
arrangement, partly, if not indeed solely, because the 
people had abolished slavery, and the leaders of the slave 
States feared that the sight of free colored people might 
injuriously affect " the peculiar institution " of the 
Southern States. It could be shown that the deadliest 
enemy which the " Monroe Doctrine "^a policy which 
was intended to secure liberty to the American continent 
and to make one brotherhood of the inhabitants of the 
Western Hemisphere — has ever had to contend with was 
the slave power in the United States ! 

This is not the place to dwell upon the storm of civil 
war which swept over the United States — a war in which 
the aggregate number of the soldiers engaged amounted 
to 3,756,053 — men representing myriads of homes 
shadowed with death ; — a war which cost the nation 
thousands of millions of' dollars and rivers of blood and 
tears. A faint idea of some of the features of civil war 
can be inferred from the following illustrations. Two 
forces met each other in battle. A soldier wounded and 
captured a prisoner — his own brother. Aiming his gun 



294 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

at a man behind a tree, the wounded prisoner said : 
"Don't fire there, Bob, that is father!" Even Edward 
Coles, who had saved lUinois from becoming a slave 
State, had his heart wrung with anguish by finding that 
his son — a mere boy — while fighting on the side of the 
Confederate States had been wounded unto death. A 
mother one day opened a letter which read as follows : 

"Executive Mansion, Washington, 
"November 21, 1864. 

" Dear Madam : I have been shown in the files of the War 
Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachu- 
setts, that you are the mother of five sons who died gloriously 
on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be 
any words of mine which would attempt to beguile you from 
the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from 
tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks 
of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly 
Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and 
leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, 
and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly 
a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. 

" Yours, very sincerely and respectfully, 

"Abraham Lincoln. 

" To Mrs. BiXBY, Boston, Massachusetts." 

At the dedication of the Soldiers' Cemeteiy at Gettys- 
burg, Lincoln in a singularly solemn speech urged the 
people to resolve " that this Nation, under God, shall 
have a new birth of freedom ; and that Government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish 
from the earth." 

The history of the Civil War and its effect upon slav- 
ery were in a single sentence, in a speech delivered on 
June 29th, 1867, thus condensed by John Bright : "The 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 295 

ground reeled under the nation during four years of agony 
until at last after the smoke of battle had cleared away, 
the horrid shape which had cast its shadow over one whole 
continent had vanished and was gone forever." 

At the close of the war about four millions of people 
who had been slaves became citizens of the Republic. The 
vote of any colored man has now the same weight in State 
and national affairs as does the vote of any other citizen 
of the Republic. These four millions of new citizens were, 
with scarcely an exception, unacquainted with even the 
alphabet of the English language. How it happened that 
people living under the United States flag were thus il- 
literate will be the better understood after taking a brief 
view of some of the laws in force at the time of the aboli- 
tion of slavery. In South Carolina an act which was 
adopted as early as 1740, and was in force with cruel 
amendments until slavery was abolished, read thus : 
" Whereas the having of slaves taught to write, or suffer- 
ing them to be employed in writing, may be attended with 
great inconveniences. Be it enacted, That all and every per- 
son and persons whatsoever who shall hereafter teach or 
cause any slave or slaves to be taught to write, or shall use 
or employ any slave as a scribe in any manner of writing 
hereafter taught to write, every such person or persons 
shall for every such offence forfeit the sum of one hun- 
dred pounds current money." * In 1800, leaving the 
enactment of 1740 in force, it was decreed that : " Assem- 
blies of slaves, free negroes, mulattoes and mestizoes, 
whether composed of all or any of such description of 
persons, or of all or any of the same and of a proportion 
of white persons, met together for the purpose of mental 
instruction in a confined or secret place, &c. &c., are de- 

* 2 Brevard's Digest, 243. Quoted by George M. Stroud in his " Sketch 
of the Laws Relating to Slavery." 1856, p. 60. 



296 OUR COLORED BRETHREN: 

clared to be an unlawful meeting ; and magistrates are 
hereby required, &c., to enter into such confined places, 
&c. &c., to break doors, &c. if resisted, and to disperse 
such slaves, free negroes, &c. &c.; and the officer dis- 
persing such unlawful assemblage may inflict such corporal 
punishment, not exceeding twenty lashes upon such slaves, 
free negroes, &c., as they may judge necessary for DETER- 
RING THEM FROM THE LIKE UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLAGE IN 
FUTURE."* Another section of the same act declared 
" That it shall not be lawful for any number of slaves, free 
negroes, mulattoes or mestizoes, even in company with 
white persons, to meet together for the purpose of mental 
instruction, either before the rising of the sun, or after the 
going down of the same."f On December 17th, 1834, as 
though the laws already in existence were not sufficiently 
severe to satisfy the slave-master, it was enacted that, " If 
any person shall hereafter teach any slave to read or write, 
or shall aid in assisting any slave to read or write, or cause 
or procure any slave to be taught to read or write, such 
person, if a free white person, upon conviction thereof, 
shall for every such offence against this act be fined not 
exceeding one hundred dollars, and imprisoned not more 
than six months ; ox xi a free person of colour, shall be 
whipped not exceeding _/f//jj^ lashes, and fined not exceed- 
ing fifty dollars; and if a slave, shall be whipped not ex- 
ceeding _;?/"// lashes ; and if any free person of colour or a 
slave shall keep any such school or other place of instruc- 
tion for teaching any slave or free person of colour to read 
or write, such person shall be liable to the same fine,:}: im- 
prisonment, and corporal punishment as are by this act 

* 7 Statutes of South Carolina, 440. See Stroud's ' ' Sketch of the Laws 
Relating to Slavery," pp. 60, 61. f Ibid. 

:|: If a slave could not pay the fine he was liable to be sold into slavery, 
and the money of his sale would be appropriated by the State. 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 297 

imposed and inflicted oxv free persons of colour and slaves for 
teaching slaves to read or write." * 

Virginia, the State in whicli Jefferson and Washington 
and Madison were born, all of whom hated slavery, by its 
code of 1849, announced that, " Every assemblage of 
negroes for the purpose of instruction in reading ox writ- 
ing shall be an imlazvful assembly. Any justice may issue 
his warrant to any ofificer or other person, requiring 
him to enter any place where such assemblage may be, and 
seize any negro therein ; and he or any other justice may 
order such negro to be punished witJi stripes. 

** If a wJiite person assemble with negroes for the pur- 
pose of instructing them to read or zvrite, he shall be con- 
fined to jail not exceeding six months, and fined not ex- 
ceeding one hundred dollars." f 

In Georgia there was a statute which seems to have 
been in force from 1770 until about the time of Lin- 
coln's death, which was similar to the one enacted in 
South Carolina in 1740, only it was even better cal- 
culated than was the South Carolina law to keep its 
colored slaves illiterate.:}: As though the law in Georgia 
already in force, making it a crime to teach colored people 
to read and write, was not severe enough to satisfy the 
owners of slaves, in 1829 it was enacted that, " If any 
slave, negro or free person of colour, or any white person, 
shall teach any other slave, negro or free person of colour 
to read or write either written or printed characters, the 
said free person of colour or slave shall be punished by 
fine and ivhipping, ox fine or whipping, at the discretion of 
the court ; and if a white person so offending, he, she or 
they shall be punished with fine not exceeding j^z^^ hun- 

* 7 Statutes of South Carolina, 468. Quoted by Stroud, p. 60. 

•j- Code of Virginia, 747, 748. Given by Stroud, p. 61. 

\ For this law of Georgia, see Cobb's Digest, 981, and Stroud's Work, p. 61. 



298 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

dred dollars, and imprisonment in the common jail at the 
discretion of the court." * Even this additional law did 
not satisfy the slave-owner. In 1833 it was further enacted 
that, " If any person shall teach any slave, negro or free 
person of colour to read or write either written or printed 
characters, or shall procure, suffer or permit a slave, negro 
or person of colour to transact business for him in writing, 
such person so offending shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, 
and, on conviction, shall be punished hy fine or imprison- 
ment in the common jail, or both, at the discretion of the 
court." f 

In North Carolina, the law forbidding any one to teach 
a slave to read or write, which was in force when Abra- 
ham Lincoln's proclamation abolishing slavery in the in- 
surgent States was issued, read thus : " Any free person 
who shall hereafter teach, or attempt to teach, any slave 
within this state to read or write, the use of figures ex- 
cepted, or shall give or sell to such slave or slaves any 
books or pamphlets, shall be liable to indictment, and upon 
conviction shall, at the discretion of the court, &c., if a 
white man or woman, be fined not less than one hundred 
dollars, nor more than two hundred dollars, or impris- 
oned ; and if a free person of colour, shall be fined, im- 
prisoned or whipped, at the discretion of the court, not 
exceeding thirty-nine lashes, nor less than twenty lashes.;}: 
And for a similar offence as to instruction, a slave shall 
receive thhty-nijie lashes on his or her bare back." § 

The law forbidding any one to teach a slave to read or 

* Ibid., 1 001. Also see Stroud's " Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery 
in the United States," 1856, p. 61. 

•j- Ibid., 828. Also Stroud's " Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in 
the United States." 

X Revised Statutes, ch. 34, § 74, p. 209. 

§ Ibid., ch. 3, § 27. See Stroud's "Sketch of the Laws Relating to 
Slavery," p. 61. 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 299 

write in Louisiana, a law enacted by its Assembly in 
March, 1830, read thus: "All persons who shall teach or 
cause to be taught any slave in this state to read or write 
shall, on conviction thereof, &c., be imprisoned not less 
than one nor more than tzvelve months." 

The law in force in Alabama at the time that the 
" peculiar institution of the South," as slavery was 
politely called, was swept away, provided that, " Any 
person who shall attempt to teach 2S\.y free person of colour 
or slave to SPELL, read or ivrite, shall upon conviction, 
&c., be fined in a sum not less than $250 nor more than 
$500."* 

To present a full view of the laws which had a direct 
and indirect influence in keeping the colored people in 
abject ignorance of letters, — laws in force at the time 
when the leaders of the Southern States undertook to 
war against the United States, — would require a volume. 
As I write I have such a volume beside me.f My heart 
sickens as I contemplate the cruelties inflicted beneath the 
stars and stripes. In the States which have just been named, 
a colored person, whether man or woman, was in danger 
of being flogged if he or she " attempted'' to learn how to 
read or write.:}: How far the flogging could be carried may 
be inferred from the fact that in one or more of the slave 
States the laws especially provided that if a slave should 
die while receiving " moderate correction," no one should 
be punished for murder. Colored people in some of the 
States were forbidden by law to even worship together. 
For example, in Virginia, a law, in force at the breaking 

* Clay's Digest, 543, act of 1832, § 10. See Stroud's " Slavery in the 
United States," p. 61. 

•)■ George M. Stroud's " Collection of Laws respecting Slaves in the 
United States." 

X It seems that the laws of Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, 
Florida and Texas were silent in respect to the education of slaves. 



300 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

out of the Civil War, reads thus : " Every assemblage of 
negroes for the purpose of religious worship, when such 
worship is conducted by a negro, shall be an unlawful 
assembly ; and a justice may issue his warrant to any offi- 
cer or other person, requiring him to enter any place 
where such assemblage may be, and seize any negro 
therein, and he or any other justice may order such negro 
to be punished with stripes."* In Mississippi, under cer- 
tain circumstances, a colored person was allowed to at- 
tend a religious meeting conducted by a white man.f 
Practically, in some of the Southern States, a Sabbath- 
school or church service could not lawfully be attended 
by slaves. Doubtless, even in such States as South Caro- 
lina and Virginia, some kind-hearted slave-owners might 
teach slaves to read. What could the slave power do to 
meet such cases? Humboldt, when travelling in the 
United States, thought it singular that in the Southern 
States no colored man could ever be seen driving a mail- 
wagon. In order to keep books and reading-matter from 
the hands of slaves, the slave power enacted in the na- 
tional Capitol, in the year i8io, that none but free white 
people should be employed in carrying the mails. The 
national government at an earlier date had been made 
to decree that in no part of the United States should 
even free colored people be allowed to serve in the mili- 
tia. The slave-power jealously kept in mind that with 
slaves ignorance of letters is weakness, and that it was 
from its point of view wise to keep the colored people 
unlettered. On some of the vessels entering the harbors 
of South Carolina and Louisiana there might be a few 
free colored people who could read and write. These 
colored men might, in some way, communicate informa- 

* Code of Virginia of 1849, P- 747- 
f Mississippi Revised Code, p. 390. 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 301 

tion to the dark mind of the slave — information of a kind 
which might not be pleasing to the slave power. In de- 
fiance of the national Constitution, State laws were made 
by which colored sailors were incarcerated in prisons 
during the period the vessels on which they came re- 
mained in port. 

Who will ever measure the evil wrought by slavery! 
Wilberforce, filled with a righteous indignation, when en- 
deavoring to put a stop to the slave-trade, was constrained 
to exclaim that slavery was " the full measure of pure un- 
sophisticated wickedness, and scorning all competition or 
comparison, it stands alone without a rival, in the secure, 
undisputed possession of its detestable preeminence! " 

That at the close of the Civil War slavery left the United 
States — especially the Southern part of the Republic — a 
fearful legacy of ignorance, was only what might have 
been expected. Jefferson's plan of emancipation, as is 
evident by his letter to Edward Coles, dated August 25th, 
1814, embraced a provision for the education of the col- 
ored people. In the book which he published and gave 
to students of the college of William and Mary, entitled 
" Notes on Virginia," he proposed that the colored people 
should be taught at the public expense the " arts and sci- 
ences, according to their geniuses." In a letter to Mr. 
Barrow, under date of May ist, 18 15, Jefferson, after stating 
that the abolition of slavery had been a subject of " early 
and tender consideration " with him, and after speaking of 
the change which would have to take place in the mind of 
the master, added " that of the slave is to be prepared by 
instruction and habit for self-government, and for the 
honest pursuits of industry and social duty." Jefferson 
in his book even wished the United States to give 
the colored people, as he expressed it, " implements 
of the household and of the handicrafts, seeds, pairs of 



302 OUR COLORED BRETHREN, 

the useful domestic animals." To these noble words 
of Jefferson's it may be interesting to add that when 
Washington, who hated slavery, and wished to God 
that it were abolished, freed at his death the slaves that 
belonged to his estate, he very wisely made an especial 
provision for their being taught to read and write. In a 
letter which Jefferson wrote to Mr. Jullien, under date of 
July 23d, i8r8, he said of the celebrated General Kos- 
ciuszko : " On his departure from the United States in 
1798, he left in my hands an instrument appropriating 
after his death all the property he had in our public 
funds,* the price of his military services here, to the edu- 
cation and emancipation of as many of the children of 
bondage in this country as it would be adequate to." 

Jefferson, when contemplating the importance of the 
United States making provision for the intellectual im- 
provement of the colored people, was actuated princi- 
pally — if not indeed altogether — by a generous desire that 
a humane and much-needed act should be performed, 
which he believed the nation to be under peculiar obliga- 
tions to perform. One can imagine how he would have 
been startled had he foreseen clearly that a time would 
come when all the slaves would suddenly be made 
American citizens, — the men, although but a very small 
proportion of them could read and write, be made voters, 
and in many communities be made practically the masters 
of the whites, and that the United States government 
should scarcely, if at all, make any provision for their 
intellectual culture ! A condition of things not only 
dangerous to the people of the Southern States, but 
endangering the well-being of the United States ! 

* Kosciuszko being entitled, by a military certificate, for services rendered 
to the United States government, by a special act provided that he should 
receive interest from the ist of January, 1793, to the 31st of December, 1797' 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN, 303 

Many years have passed since the thunders and storm 
of a great civil war, in which hundreds of thousands of 
children were made orphans and vast numbers of women 
were made widows, have been succeeded by the sunshine 
of peace. A large part of the generation of slaves who, as 
an outcome of the war received their liberty, have passed 
from the scenes of earth. The colored people live — save 
a small percentage of them — in the Southern States. 
The once slave States have an area of 851,448 square 
miles, while the States which were called free at the com- 
mencement of the Civil War have an area of only 612,597 
square miles. The Southern States cover one of the most 
beautiful and fertile sections of the world. Could these 
States but be blessed with good public-school systems 
and with good government, vast numbers of intelligent 
emigrants would esteem it a happy privilege to make for 
themselves homes within their attractive borders. These 
States, blessed with a population in the best sense of the 
word intelligent, might soon be expected to become 
wealthy, and to add, to a greater extent than they 
have ever done, to the well-being of the entire Republic. 
A few of many facts which might be mentioned, will 
give at least a faint idea of the intellectual condition 
of the people in the Southern States. The census of 
1880 reveals the fact that in Alabama, Florida, and 
Georgia, at least 47 per cent, or more of the people are 
colored. While even in North Carolina 37.9 per cent, of 
the people are of African descent, and while in Virginia 
41.7 per cent, of the people are black, in Louisiana 51.4 
per cent, of the people — or more than half — are of African 
descent. In South Carolina 60.6 per cent., or more than 
half, of the population are black. In Mississippi 57.5 per 
cent, of the people are colored. It was predicted in very 
strong and bitter language, during the excitement of war 



304 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

times, by Jefferson Davis, that the slaves freed by Lin- 
coln's Proclamation of Emancipation would perish off the 
land. The prediction that the colored people could not 
live in a state of freedom has been astonishingly, by 
results, contradicted. These people are — as revealed by 
statistics, — increasing so fast that in a good many States 
they are likely soon to be more numerous than the 
whites ; all the more likely to control the destiny of 
States in which they reside, as white people are emi- 
grating from the Southern States, In a sadly large 
number of these States the intellectual darkness of the 
people may truly be characterized as awful. In eight of 
the Southern States, which have been especially character- 
ized as the black belt, — not to speak of other Southern 
States, — an army — as shown by the census of 1880 — 
of 2,250,438 colored people ten years of age and up- 
wards could have been marshalled at the taking of 
the census, — all of whom had confessed that they 
did not even know enough of letters to escape 
being classed among " illiterates." One might here 
speak of the great army of white illiterates which are to 
be found in this beautiful land, over which has passed the 
blight of slavery and the whirlwind of civil war ; but it is 
to the colored population that attention is here being 
drawn. In the sixteen Southern States there were, in the 
year 1880, 4,695,253 colored people. Of the voters among 
these people — that is, of the men allowed to vote, — 
78.5 per cent, could not read and write. In the State of 
Georgia 81.2 per cent, of the colored adults admitted — 
and many colored people decline to make such a confes- 
sion if they have even a very slight acquaintance with 
the alphabet — that they were unable to read and write. 
In Virginia, whose territory adjoins the national capital, 
and where Washington and Madison and Jefferson! lived, — 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 305 

a State which has been proudly called the " Mother of 
Statesmen," — 78.01 per cent, of the colored voters could 
not, in the year 1880, so much as write their names. In 
Alabama 81.4 per cent, of the colored adult males, and in 
Louisiana 80.2 per cent, of these American citizens were, 
in 1880, illiterate. To understand these figures, let one 
think of the 128,257 colored voters in Virginia. Out of 
these American citizens who are called upon to vote on 
State and national affairs 100,210 do not know how to 
write their names. There are four other States in which 
the illiteracy among colored voters is larger than it is in 
Virginia. One might here speak of the 23.4 per cent, of 
the white voters of North Carolina, who cannot so much 
as write their names, but sufifice it here to confine atten- 
tion to the 6,518,372 colored people who are in the 
United States, and to remark that in South Carolina the 
majority of the voters in 1880, — including white and 
colored, — according to the census, were unable to read 
and write. 

The ignorance of letters in some of the Southern States 
is not as general as it is in others, but in all it is wofully 
great. Mr. Albion W. Tourgee, in his valuable book en- 
titled " An Appeal to Caesar "—by which he means an 
appeal to the American people, — a book which is highly 
worthy of the earnest attention of every intelligent friend 
of the Republic, has pointed out that the figures of the 
census present much too mildly the awful intellectual 
darkness which reigns in the late slave States, This 
fascinating and judicious writer presents reasons for 
believing that the desire of the colored people, when 
they know ever so little of letters, to be classed among 
those who are not illiterate is accountable for only 70 per 
cent, of their number ten years of age and upwards being 
enumerated by the census-taker as devoid of a knowledge 



306 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

of reading and writing. He presents facts which he dis- 
covered when hving in a Southern State, which he 
believes justifies one in inferring that the figures of the 
census — as starthng as they are — would be much nearer 
the truth if 90 per cent, of the vast colored population 
were regarded as illiterates.* What must be the social 
condition of the once slave States when 3,042,444 of the 
people of color and 1,672,951 of American-born whites are 
incapable of reading and writing? Taking together eight 
of the Southern States in which the colored population is 
largest, and averaging the number of white and black 
people, it is found that 48.5 per cent, of the population of 
these States, ten years of age and upwards, are illiterate. 
In this region — not to speak of the awful illiteracy of a 
large percentage of the white voters — 78.5 per cent, of 
the vast number of colored men who are entitled to 
vote — who are American citizens !— could not, in the year 
1880, so much as write a single word. In the sixteen 
Southern States — including Missouri, West Virginia, 
Delaware, and Kentucky,— on an average, 36 per cent, of 
the people — including the white population — -cannot read 
and write. In these States 4,715,395 of people are as 
little able to communicate with their fellow-citizens by 
means of writing as are the savages of Africa. Practi- 
cally, at least one half of these people are unable to 
read the ballots which they use at elections, in which the 
honor and well-being of not only the States in which they 
live, but interests of priceless value to the United States, 

* See Mr. Albion W. Tourgee's interesting and valuable work entitled, 
" An Appeal to Czesar." He has also published an instructive novel en- 
titled " Bricks without Straw," in which — as in various other writings — 
he forcibly draws attention to the educational needs of the Southern States, 
and to a practicable plan by which the national government could help 
the Southern States to secure to themselves the great blessing of good school 
systems. 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 'ifi'J 

are at stake. Well may posterity regard it as a heavy re- 
proach to the people of the United States that in 1880 — 
many years after the close of the Civil War — ^j.j per cent, 
of the colored voters in the United States should be utterly 
illiterate, and that 1,125,749 colored women, who are to no 
inconsiderable extent to influence the destiny of the com- 
ing generation of American citizens, should not so much 
as know how to write their names. Surely such a republic 
as that of the United States should aim at protecting at 
national elections the ballot from the degradation which 
necessarily must characterize a condition of affairs such 
as has been entailed upon the United States by its 
former system of slavery. There are moments when, 
upon the wisdom, energy, and decision of character of its 
statesmen — as truly as there are hours when, upon the 
valor and awful sacrifices of its soldiers — the destiny of 
a nation is decided. As the wounds of a stricken deer 
upon the mountains or lonely plains invites the attack 
of the vulture and of the wolf, so does illiteracy in a 
nation invite the enslavement of a people by temporal 
and ecclesiastical despots. As low as unlettered nations 
of all ages have sunk, as high as are the possibilities of 
future grandeur before the Republic, even so vastly 
important it is that adequate provision should be made 
for the intellectual elevation of the millions of neglected 
youth of the United States. In the year 1870 the 
number of people, white and colored, ten years of age 
and upwards, who could not read and write, according to 
the census, which, there is reason to fear, gave too low 
a figure, was 5,658,144. In the year 1880 the number had 
risen to 6,239,958, or to 581,814 more than in the year 
1870. Make whatever excuse which any one can sug- 
gest for these sad and awfully vast figures, they deserve 
to receive consideration by American statesmen. When 



308 OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

the question, " What can be done to secure to American 
youth the blessing of intellectual culture?" shall be con- 
sidered in State Capitols and in the National Legislature, 
one could wish that the spirit of Thomas Jefferson 
would enter the council-chambers, and, with the earnest- 
ness which ever characterized him when considering the 
inseparable connection which should exist between 
civil liberty and a good school system, would urge 
upon the statesmen of the present generation the 
importance of rendering their country what he con- 
sidered " the greatest of all services " by making a 
good educational law — what he called " the keystone 
of the arch of our government." As of old with burning 
earnestness Jefferson would say : " The people should be 
rendered " the safe as they are the ultimate guardians of 
their own liberty." * " It is better " that the illiterate 
"should be sought for and educated at the common expense 
^of all, than that the happiness of all should be confided to the 
weak and wicked." f " No other sure foundation [can be 
laid than that of public education] for the preservation of 
freedom and happiness." % " The tax which will be paid 
for this purpose," "if tax can be called that which we 
give to our children in the most valuable of all forms, 
that of instruction," § " is not more than the thousandth 
part of what will be paid * * * if we leave the people in 
ignorance." || " Experience * * * teaches the awful les- 
son that no nation is permitted to live in ignorance with 

* Jefferson in his " Notes on Virginia," chapter on Education. 

f Wording of the educational bill which Jefferson introduced into the 
Legislature of Virginia in 1779. 

I Letter to George Wythe, August 13th, 1786. 

§ Educational bill draughted by Jefferson in 1817. 

I Letter to George Wythe, August 13th, 1786. See also letter dated 
January 14th, 1818, to J. C. Cabell. 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 3O9 

impunity."* "In all enlightened countries a national 
education has been considered one of the first concerns of 
the legislature and intimately connected with the pros- 
perity of the State * * * It would be a melancholy reflec- 
tion, if a single youth of our country should from poverty 
be deprived of every ray of knowledge. And yet how 
many of the first geniuses of our land are condemned to 
grope out their days in a state of darkness." f Would 
that the spirit of Washington would take up the exhorta- 
tions of Jefferson, and speak as he spoke of old when he, 
with the noblest eloquence bade farewell to his country- 
men — adding to what he had already with peculiar im- 
pressiveness twice spoken in annual messages, on the 
importance of the National Legislature's aiding the cause 
of learning throughout the republic — the counsel : " Pro- 
mote * * * as an object of primary importance institutions 
for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as 
the structure of a government gives force to public opin- 
ion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlight- 
ened." Would that to this visitation of departed states- 
men the spirit of Abraham Lincoln were joined ; and that 
once more he would speak as he often spoke, saying: 
" Universal education should go along with and accompany 
the universal ballot in America. The best, the firmest and 
most enduring basis of our Republic is the thorough, 
universal, education of the great American people. The 
intelligence of the mass of our people is the light and the 
life of the Republic." Lincoln's voice, however often 
raised with eloquence in behalf of free schools in Illinois, 
may never more be heard by mortals. One who was 

* Report of Thomas Jefferson as Rector of the State University to the 
President and Directors of the Literary Fund of Virginia. 

\ Report of the Directors of the Literary Fund — of whom Jefferson was 
one — to the Legislature of Virginia. 



3IO OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 

twenty-five years his law partner has stated to me in 
writing that he has again and again heard Lincoln speak 
in substance the words of his which have just been quoted. 
He has also kindly sent me an extract from an address 
which Lincoln wrote and published in the year 1832 — but 
seven years after the opening of the University of Vir- 
ginia, — ^and distributed throughout one of the counties of 
Illinois, explaining it himself on the stump, and pledging 
himself to champion the causes which it represented, if 
elected a member of the Legislature of Illinois. In this 
address Lincoln said : " Upon the subject of education, 
not presuming to dictate any plan or system regarding it, 
I can only say that I view it as the most important sub- 
ject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every 
man may receive at least a moderate education and 
thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and 
other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the 
value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of 
vital importance, even on this account alone, to say noth- 
ing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from 
all being able to read the scriptures and other works, both 
of a religious and moral nature, for themselves." 

Abraham Lincoln, as President of the United States, 
signed what was known as the Freedman's Bureau Bill. 
He thus had the honor of helping in some degree to 
elevate, in the truest sense, to American citizenship a large 
number of colored people. By this Bureau about three 
millions of dollars was spent in providing school instruc- 
tion for the colored people. Lincoln, however, was not 
permitted to live to see the grand policy which he had a 
part in inaugurating consummated. The noble work of 
securing to American youth of every color an education 
which will help to fit them to become worthy American 
citizens is laid upon other statesmen ! 



OUR COLORED BRETHREN. 3II 

Once as I thoughtfully stood within the tomb in which 
Abraham Lincoln's remains await the resurrection call, I 
felt that by a mysterious providence Lincoln's career had 
been affected by Jefferson. I thought of Lincoln's labors 
in behalf of the colored race. Scenes of the past as a 
great panorama passed before me. I wondered whether 
Edward Coles would have acted the wise and heroic part 
he did had he not been encouraged by Jefferson to hate 
slavery ; whether if Coles had not in Illinois fought one 
of the most momentous battles for freedom that was ever 
fought on the American continent Lincoln's heart would 
have been fired to espouse the cause of the oppressed ; 
whether Jefferson's labors in helping to secure to the 
great Northwest Territory liberty and education, and his 
efforts, in a quiet way, to arouse in the hearts of certain 
youth in Virginia right feelings respecting man's enslaving 
his fellow-beings, — had not been links in the chain of 
great events which have redeemed a race from a cruel 
bondage. I thought how earnestly Jefferson and Lincoln 
would labor, could they return to this world, to induce 
the national government to do whatever wise statesman- 
ship can do to aid in the great work of securing the bless- 
ing of intellectual culture to all the future citizens of the 
Republic of the United States. 



V. 



A JEFFERSONIAN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 
OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Jefferson in a letter to Washington dated January 4th, 
1786, thus wrote: " It is an axiom in my mind, that our 
liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people 
themselves, and that, too, of the people with a certain 
degree of instruction. This it is the business of the state 
to effect, and on a general plan." These words of Jeffer- 
son's may well raise the question whether statesmanship 
can elaborate a practicable plan by which the blessing of 
school instruction will be secured to the youth of every 
part of a vast republic. 

The United States of America had, in the year 1880, an 
area of about 3,603,000 square miles. Should the United 
States flag — which is but the emblem of a great repub- 
lic or democracy in which the people are sovereign, and 
the mechanism of whose government is contrived to give 
effect to the wishes and to promote the happiness, and well- 
being, of its citizens — be raised over all of North America, 
it would wave over an area of 8,000,000 square miles ; 
should it be unfurled over Central and South America, and 
over the islands off the coast of the American continent, 
it would wave over an area of about 15,099,480 square 
miles. " How would it be possible," some one may ask, 
" to provide for the establishment and for the maintenance 
in adequate numbers of public schools and institutions of 

312 



AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION. 313 

learning of various kinds, in all parts of an empire which 
may become continental in its extent ? " Such a question 
may well have a philosophic, a momentous, interest to 
American students of the science of government. 

One who will turn his attention to the forms of govern- 
ment of civilized, and even of what may be called half- 
civilized, nations, may well be interested as he observes 
that, as a rule, it is expedient, for administrative purposes, 
to divide and to subdivide the domains over which these 
governments have jurisdiction. As an army is divided 
into brigades, and into regiments, and into companies, 
each division having a certain degree of autonomy of its 
own, so statesmen have found it useful, for administra- 
tive purposes, to subdivide realms for which they legis- 
late. One might point out with much interest the 
internal governmental arrangements of one nation after 
another when illustrating this truth. Even the Chinese 
Empire, which embraces an area of 3,937,000 square miles, 
an area larger than that covered by the United States 
at the present time, has her provinces and various sub- 
divisions, which, to an important extent, govern them- 
selves. How highly important it is to the best interests 
of nations that communities should, in an intelligent 
manner, within quite a wide sphere govern themselves, 
would be sadly illustrated by a panoramic view of certain 
dark periods in the histories of Italy, Spain, France, and of 
Austria and Germany, — of periods when the communities 
and subdivisions into which these lands were subdivided 
had but very little or no control of the management of 
their own local affairs. 

It would be interesting to observe the mighty influence 
on the prosperity and the glory of Great Britain, an 
empire which covers an area of at least 9,050,032 square 
miles, or an area more than twice that covered by the 



314 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

United States in the year 1880, and to notice how latent 
powers of nations have at times been evoked by even a 
very imperfect system of self-government. One of the 
secrets of Russia's strength is what may, in a good sense, 
be called her communal system. Russia already possesses 
more than one half of the continent of Europe, and has in 
Asia a territory vaster than the entire continent of Europe. 
Russia has an area of 8,500,000 square miles, or more than 
twice the area of the United States, Silently, ever and 
anon, her borders are extended. Again and again 
people living near the borders of this mighty empire have 
seen Russian institutions established on new territory. 
The Russians, owing in part to a peculiar training to 
which attention is presently to be called, have a disposi- 
tion, in which they in some respects resemble Anglo- 
Saxons, to establish self-governing communities. As 
pioneers in the western part of the American continent 
often fall in love with the natural scenery upon which they 
look, and with various charms of a new country, and 
establish communities of their own which they govern 
after the pattern of the liberal institutions amid which 
they have been reared, so bold Russian hunters, and 
even exiles of Siberia, and such monks of the Greek Church 
as visit the frontiers of the Empire of Russia, unite in 
founding the singular Russian community known as the 
mir — a word meaning in the Russian language " little 
world." 

The mir may be regarded as a village, or commune, 
in which the people in many respects govern themselves. 
The people elect chiefs, and establish customs, of their 
own. The land claimed by the community is at stated 
times divided and re-divided among the people according 
to the size of each individual family. Early marriages 
are encouraged by their laws. Each family is expected 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 315 

to cultivate its own share of land and to do its own work. 
The only social unit that is recognized is a man and his 
wife, and is styled " a house." " A house " is entitled 
to a kitchen-garden, and to a proportion of woodland to 
supply fuel for domestic purposes. The community sets 
apart a certain proportion of land to be held in common 
by its members for the pasturage of cattle. The land is 
divided among " the houses " — to be re-divided again at 
the expiration of three years. When the land is divided, 
a sort of village Parliament is held in the open air. The 
land is divided among " the houses " exclusively — the 
bachelor receiving nothing. If the bachelor wishes land 
he must marry, and thus with his wife become a 
"house." In the division of the land the richness of the 
soil and its location are considered. At the communal 
councils the men are all peers. In many cases, women — 
except heiresses and wives whose husbands are away 
from the mir — are not allowed to take part in the 
discussions. A so-called Elder is elected to act as a sort 
of chief in the community. He is clothed with, in some 
respects, despotic power. His powers are somewhat un- 
classified and are sometimes great. He is the only man 
who can lawfully strike any one. He has been, however, 
forbidden by a decree of the imperial government to 
flog a woman. The people, on their part, can, when they 
are displeased with an Elder, remove him and appoint 
another man in his place. The Elder is held responsible 
by the imperial government for the good behavior of 
every one living in the mir. He it is who must carry 
out imperial mandates. The citizens of these Russian 
village-democracies have inherited from quite ancient 
times various local rights which it would be unwise for 
the imperial government to abridge. Evil-doers in these 
peasant republics are tried before their own councils. 



3l6 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

where punishments, not being regulated by law, are some- 
times very cruel. The people have the right to call meet- 
ings, to propose measures, and to provide in a general 
way for the welfare of their commune. If a peasant 
wishes to take a journey, he must get permission to do so 
from the Elder. Although in the Russian mir forms of 
liberty are sometimes sadly blended with forms of despot- 
ism, the mir is a feature of Russian civilization which is 
one of the secrets of Russia's greatness. A large majority 
of the people of Russia are peasants and members of 
mirs. The people who live in cities of course live 
under a form of government of a different kind. A num- 
ber of mirs lying contigiTous to each other form a volost, 
which in English means a " canton." The canton is simi- 
lar in some respects to a county in an American State. 
In recent years another division, also designed to be in a 
measure self-governing, has been introduced into Russia. 

If a Russian Minister of War wishes to raise money 
by taxation, or to summon men to the Russian standard, 
he can send word to the mir or to the canton to 
raise and to send him' its proportion of men and money. 
The councils held in the little communes scattered over 
Russia, notwithstanding criticisms which an American 
might well make respecting them, save the imperial 
government much trouble. A nation with even such an 
imperfect system of local government as have a large 
proportion of the people of Russia, could be, there is 
reason to believe, highly raised in the scale of civilization, 
should its central government enact wise laws encour-. 
aging the people to establish and to maintain, in their 
communes and towns, good schools for their youth and 
libraries for themselves. 

A form of local government which captivated Jefferson 
is what is known as the township system of New England. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 317 

A visitor to the New England States, driving through 
their beautiful rural districts, sometimes passes a neat, 
although perhaps an humble, building, which, he may be 
told, is called the Town Meeting Hall. At a certain 
season of the year he may have the pleasure — and it will 
be no ordinary pleasure — of witnessing the proceedings 
which take place at a township meeting. He can see the 
citizens of a neighborhood — many of whom are farmers — 
assemble in a neighborly and intelligent manner to pro- 
mote the welfare of the little section of the State in which 
they reside. 

A New England township may have three or four hun- 
dred, or several thousand, inhabitants. It may have only 
some farm-houses, or it may have a town within its 
borders. The township is, in the eye of the law, a cor- 
poration. Where representation in the State Legislature 
is by districts, the township is entitled to a representative 
in the lower house of the State Legislature. When the 
government of a New England State imposes a tax for the 
public welfare, each township is assessed, and duly raises, 
its proportion of the tax. It has been estimated that a 
New England township pays voluntarily in promoting its 
own welfare at least eight times as much as it pays for 
State purposes. Each township is expected to elect 
ofBcers to perform various duties. Some of these ofBcers 
are charged with attending to school matters, others give 
their attention to roads and bridges, others have imposed 
upon them the duty of assessing and collect:ing taxes, or 
are entrusted with such other responsibilities as the town 
meeting may lay upon them. A town-clerk is charged 
with the care of the records of the proceeding of the town 
meeting — records which in time may become especially 
interesting to the historian. As the largest of nations are 
in danger of having controversies with each other respect- 



3l8 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

ing the exact boundaries of the territories over which 
they respectively have dominion, — controversies which at 
times have given rise to wars, — so might vexatious ques- 
tions respecting the exact limits of townships give rise to 
difficulties of various kinds, did not the New England 
township carefully guard against such a danger to its 
peace. A certain class of ofificersare charged with the duty 
of seeing that each post which marks the boundaries of 
their little democracy is in its proper place. These 
ofifiicers must, within certain periods, make the circuit of 
the entire township. At a New England town meeting 
any citizen can speak upon questions of local interest. 
For example, he can point out to the meeting that it 
would be well to have a bridge built over a certain stream, 
or that a school-house should be built. Of course, a con- 
stable to bear the sword of justice is elected at a town 
meeting. Should extraordinary circumstances arise which 
make it necessary that men should defend their homes, or 
their State, or the great Republic of which their State is a 
subdivision, against an enemy, by a decree from the town 
meeting men could be assembled and equipped with 
arms in a well-nigh incredibly short time. Every town- 
ship is an organization by itself, so complete that anarchy 
in a New England State is difificult to even imagine. If 
all the members of a New England State Legislature were 
captured by an enemy, township government would still 
continue. If an invader captured twenty townships, yet 
every twenty or thirty miles of a New England State 
would have a government of its own and would be pre- 
pared to offer organized resistance to its foe. 

Should any one in a New England township happen to 
be injured when crossing a bridge or riding on a road, 
owing to the neglect of a public ofificer, he can sue the 
township in a court of law for damages. Although, as a 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 319 

rule, only the ofificers, who are called selectmen, are 
expected to call a town meeting, yet should any ten citi- 
zens think it desirable that such a meeting should be 
held, they can, by uniting in making a formal request of 
a selectman, have such a meeting assembled. As a rule, 
at a meeting a selectman presides. The people are 
notified in advance of the character of the business which 
is to be transacted. Dignity and wisdom often character- 
ize to a truly remarkable extent the debates which take 
place in these small, and at times very humble, parlia- 
mentary gatherings. 

It has been found in New England — and, indeed, to a 
certain extent in all parts of the United States — that 
local government, when wisely established, often awakens 
the genius and energies of a people. The citizen is apt 
to become interested in a happy manner in public affairs. 
Every citizen is sensible of a degree of political import- 
ance, and feels that he is in a measure responsible for the 
well-being of the community in which he lives. Men 
gathering together at the township meeting, and having 
common interests, become acquainted with each other 
and ties of friendship are often formed. The people of 
New England can appeal to an experience dating from 
the days when New England was first visited by the 
Puritans, in support of the belief that communities are 
capable of themselves managing a certain class of affairs. 

Jefferson greatly admired New England's system of 
local government. In a letter dated May 26th, 1810, to 
Governor Tyler, Jefferson wrote : " You wish to see me 
again in the Legislature, but this is impossible. * * * I 
have indeed two great measures at heart, without which 
no republic can maintain itself in strength, i. That of 
general education, to enable every man to judge for 
himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To 



320 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all 
the children of each will be within a central school in it. 
But this division looks to many other fundamental pro- 
visions." Jefferson then sketched a system of local gov- 
ernment similar to the township system of New England. 
Continuing, he said : " These little republics would be the 
main strength of the great one. We owe to them the 
vigor given to our revolution in its commencement in the 
Eastern States." He then pointed out the practical work- 
ing of such a system. " General orders," he wrote, " are 
given out from a centre to the foreman of every hundred, 
as to the sergeants of an army, and the whole nation is 
thrown into energetic action, in the same direction in one 
instant and as one man, and becomes absolutely irresistible." 

JefTerson wished a State and national school system to 
have ever in view the importance of setting in motion, 
and keeping in motion, what is known as local self- 
government. In a letter dated April 2d, i8i6, which he 
wrote to Governor Nicholas, he alluded to the subdivisions 
into which he had proposed, in the bill which he introduced 
in the Legislature of Virginia in the year 1779, to divide 
his native State. Alluding to the school district he said : 
" My partiality for that division is not founded in views 
of education solely, but infinitely more as the means of a 
better administration of our government, and the eternal 
preservation of its republican principles. The example 
of this most admirable of all human contrivances in gov- 
ernment, is to be seen in our Eastern States ; and its 
powerful effect in the order and economy of their internal 
affairs, and the momentum it gives them as a nation, is 
the single circumstance which distinguishes them so 
remarkably from every other national association." 

Jefferson believed that a good school system and local 
government would react in a happy manner upon each 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 32 1 

other. To his cherished friend, Joseph C. Cabell, he 
wrote on January 31st, 18 14: " There are two subjects, in- 
deed, which I claim a right to further as long as I breathe, 
the public education, and the subdivision of counties into 
wards. I consider the continuance of republican govern- 
ment as absolutely hanging on these two hooks." In 
another letter which Jefferson wrote to Cabell on February 
2d, 1 8 16, he drew attention to a system of public schools 
for Virginia, and then continued : " If it is believed that 
these elementary schools will be better managed by the 
Governor and Council, the Commissioners of the Literary 
Fund, or any other general authority of the Government, 
than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against 
all experience. * * * My friend, the way to have good 
and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to 
divide it among the many, distributing to every one ex- 
actly the functions he is competent to. Let the National 
Government be entrusted with the defence of the nation, 
and its foreign and federal relations ; the State Govern- 
ments with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration 
of what concerns the State generally ; the counties with 
the local concerns of the counties ; and each ward direct 
the interests within itself. It is by dividing and sub- 
dividing these republics from the great national one 
down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the 
administration of every man's farm and affairs by himself; 
by placing under every one what his own eye may super- 
intend, that all will be done for the best. What has 
destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every Govern- 
ment which has ever existed under the sun ? The gen- ^ 
eralizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one 
body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or 
France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian Sejiate. And I 
do believe, that if the Almighty has not decreed that man 



322 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

shall never be free (and it is blasphemy to believe it), that 
the secret will be found in making himself the depository 
of the powers respecting himself, so far as he is competent 
to them, and delegating only what is beyond his compe- 
tence by a synthetical process, to higher and higher 
orders of functionaries, so as to trust fewer and fewer 
powers, in proportion as the trustees become more and 
more oligarchical. The elementary republics of the wards, ' 
the county republics, the State republics, and the repub- 
lic of the Union, would form a gradation of authorities, 
standing each on the basis of law, holding every one 
its delegated share of powers, and constituting truly a 
system of fundamental balances and checks for the Gov- 
ernment. Where every man is a sharer in the direction 
of his ward republic, or of some of the higher ones, and 
feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs, 
not merely at an election, one day in the year, but every 
day ; when there shall not be a man in the State who will 
not be a member of some one of its councils, great or 
small, he will let the heart be torn out of his body, sooner 
than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a 
Bonaparte. How powerfully did we feel the energy of 
this organization in the case of the Embargo ? I felt the 
foundations of the Government shaken under my feet by 
the New England township. There was not an individual 
in these States whose body was not thrown, with all its 
momentum, into action ; and, although the whole of the 
other States were known to be in favor of the measure, 
yet, the organization of this little selfish minority enabled 
it to override the Union. What could the unwieldly 
counties of the Middle, the South, and the West do? Call 
a county meeting, and the drunken loungers at and about 
the court-houses would have collected, the distances being 
too great for the good people and the industrious generally 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 323 

to attend. The character of those who really met would 
have been the measure of the weight they would have 
had in the scale of public opinion. As Cato then con- 
cluded every speech with the words * Carthago delenda est,' 
so do I every opinion with the injunction 'divide the 
counties into wards.' Begin them only for a single pur- 
pose, they will soon show for what others they are the 
best instruments." 

To the extracts from Jefferson's letters which have just 
been presented, one additional extract may well be here 
given so as to illustrate how highly important he consid- 
ered a system of local government. Writing to Samuel 
Kerchival on July I2th, 1816, alluding to his favorite idea 
of dividing counties into wards or townships, he said : 
" These wards, called townships in New England, are the 
vital principle of their government, and have proved them- 
selves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of 
man for the perfect exercise of self-government and for its 
preservation." 

The form of township government which Jefferson 
esteemed as highly as he did still characterizes New Eng- 
land. Some of the States, it may here be noticed, have 
forms of local government different from, and perhaps 
even better than, those of New England. In the year 1870 
the average size of a New England township was about 
thirty-four square miles. In that year there were not 
less than fourteen hundred and twenty-four townships in 
New England. To maintain a prison and a court-house 
in each of these townships would be extravagant. It has 
been found expedient that groups of these townships 
should unite and form a county. The county easily 
maintains a court-house and a prison. By wise State laws 
every township, however small, must maintain a school. 
When its population reaches a certain size it must also 



324 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

have a grammar school. In some cases two small town- 
ships may unite in maintaining one high school. Should 
a township neglect to obey these State laws any parent 
can appeal to the courts. Whenever a New England com- 
munity becomes sufficiently populous to do so, it can, by 
complying with certain forms of law, become a city and 
have a municipal form of government. In some of the New 
England States no one can vote who cannot at least read. 

One may be permitted to indulge the hope that by a 
wise system of polity — a system making provision for 
what may be called local government — the wants of every 
section of vast empires can be cared for and the people 
be infused with enterprise, and be enabled to enjoy a free- 
dom that will have a happy influence upon them, while 
the national government and its various divisions remain 
free from the odium of any unnecessary interference in 
local concerns. By wise State laws in New England the 
sphere in which township government revolves is so 
arranged that it fits into the sphere in which the State 
government moves, somewhat, one might almost say, as 
the cogwheels of one piece of machinery fit into the 
wheels of another piece of well-devised machinery, — the 
State in its turn having its own relation to the national 
government. People may indeed make mistakes when 
governing themselves, but their self-interest is enlisted on 
the side of good government, while the interests of a 
ruler who from a position outside the community governs 
its people may be, at times, different from the best inter- 
ests of those for whom he legislates. A people who 
govern themselves are ever urged by their own interests 
to endeavor to act wisely for the common good. 

The establishment of an effective system of local gov- 
ernment in all parts of the United States is, by many 
statesmen, an end much to be desired. By the history of 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 325 

every State it is found that a good school system aids in 
establishing what may be called local self-government. 
The State of New York, in 1812, enacted some school 
laws which gave it almost at once, at least as far as its 
schools were concerned, a system of local government. 
State laws provided a State school fund for which money 
was to be paid to each county which itself raised by 
taxation an amount of money equal to the sum to which 
it was entitled, provided it complied with certain laws, to 
receive from the State. A Mr. Gideon Hawley, a highly 
gifted man, was appointed State School Superintendent, 
to help to give efficiency to the State school system. 
The people of every neighborhood were thus given an 
incentive to take action respecting the education of their 
children. The fact that each district was entitled to 
receive money from the State fund, and to hold meetings 
to levy a tax for school purposes, was well calculated to 
excite the interest of the people. It was not long before 
some of the districts began to enter into a generous rivalry 
with each other to have the best schools in their section 
of country. Although the amount of money which 
each district received from the State was small, — perhaps 
on an average not more than twenty dollars a year, — it 
was enough to set in motion, in a very happy manner, the 
machinery of local government. In many instances hand- 
some school-houses were cheerfully raised by the people. 
The people were enabled to feel that the schools belonged 
to them as truly as would a public library, a bridge, or a 
public road, and that the school was a place which their 
children could attend without the slightest loss of self- 
respect. Not only were the public schools much cheaper 
to parents than ordinary private schools would have been, 
but they were also much better. Wise arrangements 
were made for the supervision of these popular schools, 



326 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

which insured to youth the advantage of having able 
instructors. In districts in which, owing to conflicting 
interests, or to a lack of united action among the people, 
no one would have ventured to hope to see a school, 
youth who had been in danger of growing up illiterate 
received instruction. The school law of 1812, to which 
attention has been drawn, being supplemented from time 
to time by other wise laws, bore astonishingly good fruit. 
DeWitt Clinton, Governor of New York, in his annual 
message in the year 1822, spoke with eloquence of the 
stand which the State of New York had taken respecting 
public schools. While dwelling on the subject he said : 
"The excellent direction which has been given to the 
public bounty, in appropriations for common schools, 
academies, and colleges, is very perceptible in the multi- 
plication of our seminaries of education, in the in- 
crease of the number of students, and in the acquisition 
of able and skilful teachers." Clinton then, having 
in view some of Jefferson's labors in Virginia, added, 
as he continued to speak of what was being done 
in New York: " I am happy to have it in my power to 
say that this State has always evinced a liberal spirit in 
the promotion of education, and I am persuaded that no 
considerations short of that of total inability will ever 
prevent similar demonstrations. The first duty of a State 

\ is to render its citizens virtuous by intellectual instruc- 
tion and moral discipline, by enlightening their minds, 
purifying their hearts, and teaching them their rights and 
their obligations. Those solid and enduring honors 
which arise from the cultivation of science and the acqui- 

'■ sition and diffusion of knowledge will outlive the renown 
of the statesman and the glory of the warrior ; and if any 
stimulus were wanting in a case so worthy of all our 

^jattention and patronage, we may find it in the example 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 327 

before our eyes of the author of the Declaration of Inde-i 
pendence, who has devoted the evening of his illustrious, 
life to the establishment of an university in his nativeiJ 
State." As Clinton proceeded he spoke of New York's 
interest in the public lands of the United States, and of 
the wisdom of her exerting her influence to induce the 
national government to help, by consecrating public 
lands to the cause of education, to secure to the youth of 
the Republic of the United States the blessing of school 
instruction. 

To-day some of the States have systems of local gov- 
ernment to which they are indebted, in large part, to 
national laws. The State of Kansas illustrates this fact. 
When Kansas became a State she came into possession of 
a vast amount of land which the national government 
had appropriated for educational purposes. In the year 
1886 she had a school fund of not less than $3,500,000. 
By selling a million acres of land which she had received 
from the Government of the United States, she could have 
swelled her school fund to $15,000,000 or to $20,000,000. 
By her Constitution the interest of her school fund is 
'devoted to common schools. One can perhaps truly say 
of this fund that its chief value is the influence which it 
is made, by wise statesmanship, to exert in promoting 
local government. The revenue obtained from it, divided 
among the many school -districts, gives to each district 
but a small sum, but that small sum is disbursed in a way 
which causes it to multiply in amount and to greatly 
encourage the establishment of a system of local govern- 
ment in every part of the State. In the year 1880, in 
Kansas, notwithstanding the number of foreigners within 
her borders and her colored population, there were but 
25,000 persons, ten years of age and upwards, who could 
not read. In the year 1886 Kansas had 8,219 school 



328 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

teachers, to whom she paid in a single year nearly 
$2,000,000. She had not less than about 6,673 school- 
houses and a State university, a State normal school, and 
a State agricultural college. The people in many com- 
munities cheerfully taxed themselves for school purposes 
to a degree that the Legislature of Kansas would not 
have dared to have taxed them. During the five years 
from 1880 to 1885 Kansas spent $12,630,480 in providing 
the means of instruction for her youth. 

Kansas, whose early history has left a deep impress on 
the history of the United States, became a State in the 
year 1861. In the year i860 she had but a population of 
107,206 people. According to an interesting paper on 
" The Progress of Kansas," in the April number of the 
North American Review of the year 1886, by her Gov- 
ernor, John A. Martin, a paper to which I am indebted 
for these statistics, Kansas had, in the year 1886, a 
population of 1,350,000. This young State has great 
natural resources, but its prosperity may be considered as, 
at least in part, a natural consequence of its system of 
local government. 

Hand-in-hand with the establishment of any school 
fund for a State should go wise laws. This fact Jeffer- 
son discovered while laboring to establish a public-school 
system in Virginia. He was one of the managers of 
what was known as the Literary Fund of Virginia. 
This fund amounted in the year 1818 to about $1,500,000. 
It was established by the State of Virginia at the instance 
of the distinguished statesman Mr. James Barbour. 
Barbour had been Governor of Virginia, a member of the 
Cabinet of John Ouincy Adams, and had represented the 
United States as Minister to England. When, however, 
he was about to die he requested that, if any monument 
should be reared to his memory, it should bear on it only 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 329 

the inscription, " The Originator of the Literar}'- Fund of 
Virginia." The establishment of a good school system 
in Virginia was a work beset with difficulties. Slavery 
made it especially difficult to establish a wise system of 
local government. What schools were established Jeffer- 
son found, were in some respects too independent of the 
State.* The money from the Literary Fund was disbursed 
in a way which was wasteful, and in a way which very 
imperfectly advanced the educational interests of the 
State. It should be remembered, however, that the school 
system of Virginia was at the time in its infancy. 

When a form of local government is established by a 
State, or by a township, or by a city, a means is provided 
by which many useful laws respecting educational affairs 
can at least be considered by the people or by their 
representatives, and be, perhaps, happily enacted. 

One of the ways in which Jefferson wished to see gov- 1 
ernments advancing the interests of learning was by mak-1 
ing wise provisions in aid of the establishment of public! 
libraries. A free library may justly be called a home of 
science, of poetry, of history, — indeed, one may almost say 
of every branch of learning, — a home to which the lover 
of truth, of knowledge, of the human race, may repair to 
fit himself, or herself, by means of valuable learning for 
usefulness to human kind. Could one imagine a com- 
monwealth blessed with a mystic building in which abide 
learned authors of all lands, even the shades of the 
accomplished dead, ever holding themselves compla- 
cently ready to freely advise any visitor who needs light 
on subjects to which they have given laborious and espe- 
cial attention, if not even life-long study ; such a com- 
monwealth would scarcely be more favored than is at 

* See Letter of Jefferson's, dated Feb. 15th, 1821, to Gen. Breckenridge. 
"Jefferson's Works," vol. vii., p. 205. 



330 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

present many a town and village in the United States in 
which a free library is wisely supported by the people. 
Many men and women who have access to libraries are 
enabled to act a better part in the history of their times 
than they could did they not have access to books which, 
are often as necessary to learning as is sustenance to the 
body. At the present time many men and women fail to 
be the half of what they might be if the town, or district, 
in which they live had established a public library. Such 
an institution has often been the means of awaking some 
noble spirit to a useful and even to a glorious life. It is 
told of a farmer, who lived in a frontier town in New 
Hampshire, that he helped to establish a circulating 
library in his neighborhood. One of the frequenters of 
this small garner-house of knowledge was the son of that 
farmer. The father, who was pleased at seeing his son 
endeavoring to acquire useful knowledge, one day, as he 
was riding with him in a sleigh, told him that he proposed to 
endeavor to send him to college. The youth, whose name 
was Daniel Webster, being filled with emotion, could not 
for a time speak, knowing that his father was poor. In 
time he went to a town in which to pursue some studies 
before presenting himself at Dartmouth College. In 
this town he found another library. In this silent uni- 
versity his mind broadened. At college he had an oppor- 
tunity to still further store his mind with the wisdom of 
the learned. When, in after years, he held the Senate of 
the United States entranced by his eloquence, little did 
his admirers know of the silent hours which he had spent 
in company with books. 

That a town in which there is a public library is a more 
desirable place to live in than it would be without such 
an institution, will be probably granted by every one who 
appreciates at their true worth such places of culture. It 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 33 I 

has sometimes been whispered by men of letters in the 
old world, that the education of many American men 
and women is surprisingly shallow. If there was a free 
library in every district and town, from the Atlantic Ocean 
to the Pacific main, certainly the standard of true learning 
would be higher in the United States than it is. The 
personal resources of even the wealthiest citizen cannot 
always acquire books which might be found in such silent 
schools. 

Many authors are " workers for posterity." The words 
of the orator, unless committed to the custody of the 
press, soon die upon the air. Many an author is encour- 
aged in self-sacrificing work, — amounting to heroism,^ 
amidst hopes and fears and innumerable obstacles, by 
feeling that the result of his labors may be reaped by, 
and be a blessing to, humanity, when he shall be sleeping 
with the dead, and that thus, when dead, he shall exert for 
a time an influence in behalf of truth, or of civil liberty, 
or of some noble cause in which he has hoped to benefit 
his fellow-beings. Surely those statesmen, or citizens, 
who labor to found free libraries enter into the labors of 
such men, and thus sometimes become benefactors to the 
human race. 

On May 19th, 1809, about six weeks after retiring from 
the presidency of the United States, JefTerson wrote thus 
to a Mr. John Wyche : '' Your favor of March 19th came 
to hand but a few days ago, and informs me of the establish- 
ment of the Westward Mill Library Society, of its general 
views and progress. I always hear with pleasure of insti- 
tutions for the promotion of knowledge among my coun- 
trymen. The people of every country are the only safe 
guardians of their own rights, and are the only instruments 
which can be used for their destruction. And certainly 
they would never consent to be so used, were they not 



332 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

deceived. To avoid this, they should be instructed to a 
certain degree. I have often thought that nothing would 
do more extensive good at small expense than the estab- 
lishment of a small circulating library in every county, to 
consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the peo- 
ple of the county, under such regulations as would secure 
their safe return in due time. These should be such as 
would give them a general view of other history, and a 
particular view of that of their own country, a tolerable 
knowledge of geography, the elements of natural philos- 
ophy, of agriculture, and mechanics. Should your exam- 
ple lead to this it would do great good. Having had 
more favorable opportunities than fall to every man's lot 
of becoming acquainted with the best books on such 
subjects as might be selected, I do not know that I can 
be otherwise useful to your society than by offering them 
any information respecting these which they might wish. 
My services in this way are freely at their command." 

However much Jefferson would have liked to have seen 
a public library in every county of Virginia, he died with- 
out the sight. In the New England States of the present 
day every city and township is encouraged by wise pro- 
visions, enacted by their respective State governments, to 
tax itself, within prescribed limits, for the maintenance of 
public libraries. The State law authorizing any township 
or city to itself provide for a library has been found by 
experience to be eminently wise. One could wish that 
in every State there was such a law. 

It is pleasant to be able to state that in many, if not 
indeed in all, the cities on the Pacific coast one finds valu- 
able free circulating libraries. The traveller is sometimes 
surprised and charmed even when visiting towns among 
the Rocky Mountains, to find valuable collections of 
books. Not to speak of the public library of Minneapolis, 



OF THE UNITED STA TES. 333 

or of Cincinnati, or of one town after another in rapidly 
growing States, a visit to the city library of Chicago is on 
some accounts especially interesting. When in the year 
1871 the telegraph spread the news that Chicago was in 
flames, and that many thousands of houses were in ashes, 
and that a vast multitude of citizens were shelterless, some 
thoughtful English friends undertook to show their sym- 
pathy for the impoverished people by, among other acts 
of kindness, at once helping in making provision for the 
intellectual culture for the new city, which they foresaw 
was to arise from the one which had been partially de- 
stroyed by fire. Mr. Thomas Hughes, who was at the 
time a member of Parliament, issued a circular to book- 
sellers and to friends of literature in England, suggesting 
that Chicago should be helped to have a public library. 
In this circular it was stated that " the library to be es- 
tablished would be regarded as a token of that sentiment 
of kinship which, independently of circumstances, and in- 
dependent of every other consideration, must ever power- 
fully affect the different branches of the English race. 
* * -jf "While the home literature of the present day and 
the last hundred years will form an important portion of 
the New Library, the characteristic feature of the gift will 
consist in sending to the Americans works of the thirteen 
preceding centuries, which are the common inheritance of 
both peoples." This circular was signed by Queen Vic- 
toria, John Bright, William E. Gladstone, and by many 
others. Soon packages of books commenced to reach 
Chicago directed to the Mayor, with such messages as 
these : " To renew lost library, with sympathy and best 
wishes." " With kindest remembrances," etc. One of 
the largest of the packages came from Queen Victoria. 
A number of citizens of Chicago requested the Mayor 
to call a public meeting in behalf of a free library. The 



334 ^^ AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

meeting met in the Plymouth Congregational Church, 
which had happily been spared by the great fire. The 
result of the meeting was that Mayor Medill, who appre- 
ciated the value to Chicago of a free library, framed an 
enactment which was at once passed by the Legislature 
of Illinois. This enactment, which was perhaps over- 
careful in limiting the amount of money to be raised 
by taxation, was copied in part from a law which has 
been the means of doing much good in England, and 
which, with improvements, has been adopted in Massa- 
chusetts.* This law read thus: "Be it enacted by the 
People of the State of Illinois represented in General 
Assembly, That the City Council of each incorporated 
city shall have power to establish and maintain a Public 
Library and Reading Room for the use and benefit of the 
inhabitants of each city, and may levy a tax of not ex- 
ceeding one mill on the dollar annually, and in cities of 
over 100,000 inhabitants, not to exceed one fifth of one 
mill annually, on all the taxable property in the city — 
such tax to be levied and collected in like manner with 
other general taxes of said city, and to be known as the 
Library Fund." 

The Common Council of Chicago without a dissenting 
voice approved this act and soon, with the aid of a large 
sum of money given by Mr. Thomas Hughes and his as- 
sociates in England, Chicago had a public library, destined 

* Some of the laws governing public libraries in Massachusetts may here 
be noticed : " Any City or Town of this Commonwealth is hereby authorized 
to establish and maintain a public library, within the same, with or without 
Branches, for the use of the inhabitants, and to provide suitable rooms there- 
for under such regulations for the government of said library as may from 
, time to time be proscribed by the City Council of such city or the inhabitants 
, of such town. * * * Any Town or City may receive in its corporate 
■capacity and hold and manage any devise, bequest, or donation, for the es- 
tablishment, increase, or maintenance of a Public library within the same." 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 335 

to be yearly visited by many thousands of her citizens. 
Now that the city of the great lakes has become one of 
the wealthiest cities of America, it can hardly be doubted 
that her patriotic citizens will do as much for the cause 
of learning as St. Louis is doing. St. Louis has a beSuti- 
ful building for its public library, — not, however, as large 
and beautiful a one as is that of Cincinnati. 

Jefferson felt that it was very important that wisdom 
should be shown in the selection of books for public 
libraries. As a rule each community which founds a pub- 
lic librar}^ determines for itself what class of books shall 
be admitted to its shelves. To say that the value of 
books depends more upon their character than upon their 
quantity is to make a trite remark. Some people place a 
greater value upon works of fiction than do others. Jef- 
ferson looked upon the novels of his day, with some ex- 
ceptions, as a " mass of trash." Perhaps some people 
have gone too far in excluding all works of fiction from 
public libraries, while others have erred in the opposite 
and probably worse extreme, and have provided almost 
exclusively romances for readers. It was found in one 
library that when people who had been accustomed to 
reading the novels of the day visited it a few times and 
learned that it did not, as a rule, have novels, they were 
led to make the acquaintance — an acquaintance which be- 
came very pleasant — of useful and well-written books, and 
thus many readers were weaned from merely reading 
romances. A desire for self-culture was engendered. 
Literary recreation became profitable to such readers as 
well as pleasant. Books taken to the domestic fireside 
elevated the conversation, made homes more attractive, and 
in a very happy manner advanced the cause of learning. 

Citizens who propose to establish a public library would 
do well to bear in mind the importance of cataloguing 



336 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

books in a judicious manner. Too often, it is to be feared, 
many books in a library might as well be locked up in a 
vault for any use they are to the public, owing to the im- 
perfect manner in which they are classified in a catalogue. 
In flie great library of the British Museum a gentleman 
is specially engaged in helping visitors to select books 
that may be useful to them, so that they may be enabled 
to use to greatest advantage the resources of the institu- 
tion. Some libraries are divided, to a greater or less 
extent, into alcoves on whose shelves books are placed 
according to the subjects upon which they treat. The 
history of each nation is by itself. The books on each 
science are found together. It is in some respects pecul- 
iarly pleasant to visit such a granary of knowledge. 

To the statesman who has upon his mind the high 
concerns of a republic, a public library may at times be 
invaluable. In the work which he has to do, it may be 
well indeed for his country if he successfully seeks to con- 
sult the wisdom and the lore of ages. Often would states- 
men have avoided errors highly injurious to their country 
had they had access to, and had they profited by the re- 
sults of human experience to be found in, books. Jeffer- 
son, at an early period in his career, and at a time when 
|no other State except New Hampshire had a State 
■library, endeavored to induce Virginia to lay out a sum 
of money, large for that period, in providing a library for 
[the Capitol of Virginia. When the Congressional Library 
at Washington was burned by the British in the }^ear 
1 8 14, he offered his own large and valuable library to the 
national government at whatever price it should place 
upon it. In the course of a letter, dated September 21st, 
18 14, authorizing a friend to offer his library to the 
national government, he said : " You know my collec- 
tion, [of books,] its condition and extent. I have been 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 337 

fifty years making it, and have spared no pains, opportu- 
nity, or expense, to make it what it is. While residing in 
Paris, I devoted every afternoon I was disengaged, for a 
summer or two, in examining all the principal bookstores, 
turning every book with my own hand, and putting by 
everything which related to America, and indeed what- 
ever was rare and valuable in every science. Besides this 
I had standing orders during the whole time I was in 
Europe, on its principal book-marts, particularly Amster- 
dam, Frankfort, Madrid, and London, for such works 
relating to America as could not be found in Paris. So 
that in that department particularly, such a collection was 
made as probably can never again be effected. * * * 
During the same period, and after my return to America, 
I was led to procure, also, whatever related to the duties 
of those in the high concerns of the nation. So that the 
collection, which I suppose is of between nine and ten 
thousand volumes, while it includes what is chiefly val- 
uable in science and literature generally, extends more 
particularly to whatever belongs to the American states- 
man." 

Jefferson's offer to the national government was ac- 
cepted, and about six thousand seven hundred of his 
books were bought and became a nucleus for a new Con- 
gressional Library. The national government, having 
been taught by experience that a fire-proof building 
should be provided for the Congressional Library, — and 
the number of books for which provision should be made 
rapidly increasing, — has made provision for a national 
library which is in a measure to be worthy of the Re- 
public. This library is, to a certain extent, destined to 
be a national university such as Washington, Jefferson, 
and Madison wished to see established at the capital of 
the United States. Many students, historians, statisticians, 



338 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

and men of letters from all parts of America, as well as 
statesmen, will, at times, visit this national library. 

There are many ways in which governments can indi- 
rectly encourage the cause of learning. In probably few 
ways have governments done more in recent years to give 
an incentive to people to acquire a certain degree of use- 
ful knowledge than by establishing certain regulations 
respecting their forms of civil service. Every nation may 
be said to have what is known as a civil service and a 
military service. As a rule, men who command in the 
army or the navy of the United States have to be pos- 
sessed of a certain degree of education. In short, the 
military service is conducted on a wise system established 
by law. In the United States, one branch of the civil 
service is what is called elective. It is made up of the 
representatives of the people. This branch of the civil 
service is in a measure supervised by the people them- 
selves, and to it attention is not here to be called. But 
there is an immense branch of the civil service of the 
United States composed of men and women who are not 
elected by the people, — such as employes engaged by the 
government to do various kinds of work. It would be an 
easy matter to here make some startling statements re- 
specting the manner in which the civil service of the 
national and State governments have been in the past 
conducted, and how evils foreseen by Jefferson fol- 
lowed a law which made unreasonable changes among 
the government's employes, occur on every new election 
for President of the United States. Suffice it to say that 
a movement has at last been successfully inaugurated by 
which applicants for a large class of public offices are 
examined respecting their ability to read, to write from 
dictation, to write an original letter, and are expected to 
pass an examination in the history and geography of the 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 339 

United States. They are expected to have also an 
acquaintance with the national Constitution, and with the 
Constitution of the State in which they reside, and with 
such learning as may be especially important in the posi- 
tions which they seek. A person seeking a high position 
of course is expected to know more than one who is a 
suitor for but a lowly place. The examinations are designed 
to be only such as any youth who has passed through the 
public schools should be easily able to pass. The tenure 
of office is during good behavior and efficiency. Great 
care is taken not to make the examination unfairly diffi- 
cult. Youth of rich and of poor parents have an equal 
opportunity to enter the civil service of the United 
States. By this system many shocking abuses known 
as bribery, favoritism, jobbery, and patronage, and many 
forms of corruption, are removed, and the youth of the 
land are given an additional incentive to acquire a cer- 
tain degree of education. Employment in the civil ser- 
vice of the United States has been made more honorable 
than it could be when, as was once too often the case, 
it meant a dishonorable servility to chiefs rather than 
faithful service to the public. It is found that a good 
administrative system exerts a silent but important influ- 
ence in aid of popular education. 

That nations can aid the cause of letters indirectly by 
means of a civil-service system has been illustrated for 
many centuries, or for thousands of years, in the great 
Chinese Empire, whose population has been estimated 
in recent years by S. Wells Williams, who spent forty 
years in China, to be probably four hundred and fifty 
millions of people. For perhaps more than forty-five 
centuries the Chinese have had an educational system 
which has had a tendency to make them a homogeneous 
people. Many nations have been born and have passed 



340 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

away, while the people of this vastest of Oriental empires 
have maintained their nationality. Their educational and 
civil-service systems have been interwoven with each 
other, and may be regarded as being the secret of the 
greatness of the stability of their empire. In China there 
can scarcely be said to be a nobility, except the descend- 
ants of Confucius. No one, however rich he may be, is 
allowed to enjoy public station unless he can pass a 
governmental examination. It is claimed that the poorest 
boy, from the moment he enters a town or village school, 
knows that if he can acquire the education demanded by 
any position of state, save that occupied by the Emperor 
himself, who claims to be Infallible, and is styled the Son 
of Heaven, he can hope to obtain the position. The 
examination which he may have to pass may be hard, 
indeed, but it is said that the words, " The general and 
the prime-minister are not born in office," are in every 
school-boy's mouth. The works which the youth studies 
ai'e the writings of Confucius, who lived about five hun- 
dred years before the Christian era. These works are 
believed to be studied by about fifty millions of people in 
addition to the vast population of the *' Flowery King- 
dom." The boy has to study in great measure by heart 
words whose meaning he no more understands than does 
an ordinary European youth the Latin service of the Roman 
Catholic Church. As, however, the young Oriental pro- 
ceeds in his studies, more useful learning — at least to a 
limited extent — engages his attention. To master the 
very difficult Chinese written language takes ten to thirty 
years. There are at least three grades in the Chinese 
schools — the primary, the middle, and the so-called classi- 
cal. An immense number of examining officials are 
engaged by cities and by the imperial government to 
confer honors upon scholars who pass satisfactory exami- 



OF THE UNITED STA TES. 34.I 

nations, and to install them into public office. The gov- 
ernment supports an academy from which examiners are 
despatched to all parts of the vast empire to pass judg- 
ment on the merits of aspirants to high national positions. 
From this academy, which is only open to men who have 
already shown themselves learned, some of the highest 
State officials — even the men esteemed worthy of a place 
in the imperial Cabinet — are often taken. When the 
news is brought to a village that some one of the innu- 
merable honors of the empire has been conferred upon one 
of its citizens, the joy at times is at once exciting and 
affecting. One of the privileges enjoyed by a Chinaman 
who has successfully passed certain examinations is that 
he cannot be whipped or bastinadoed with a bamboo 
stick. In a land in which prisoners are examined often 
" by torture," and in which prisoners are shockingly ill- 
treated — although, perhaps, not more so than they are in 
some prisons in other countries, — to enjoy immunity from 
castigation with a bamboo stick is an honor not to be 
lightly esteemed by the Oriental scholar. 

When a Chinaman, having passed successfully public 
examinations, is invested with official station, his position 
is, during good behavior, secured to him. For, however, 
any one of eight causes he may be removed from office : 
for a grasping disposition ; for cruelty ; for indolence ; for 
inattention to duty ; for being too aged for a position ; 
for indecorous behavior ; and for inactivity. 

Unhappily the Chinese have but a narrow range of 
studies in their schools. Much that goes with them by 
the name of learning is unworthy, in a true sense, of the 
name. That, however, the civil service system of these 
Asiatics has been an incentive to many millions of their 
number to learn the very difficult Chinese letters, can be 
recognized by any student of the history of the far East. 



342 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

It will be noticed that these pagan people make but 
little, if indeed the least, provision for the illumination of 
the mind of the gentler sex. For women there is not the 
same incentive for men. No hope of acquiring honor 
and public station is held out by the imperial govern- 
ment for them. It is even a superstition in China, which 
found its way with other false ideas of true religion into 
Spain, that it is immoral for women to be acquainted with 
letters. , Dif^cult it is indeed to estimate how injurious 
to an immense division of the human race is this neglect 
to provide for the mental cultivation of the gentler half 
of human kind. 

The civil service of China is at most suited but to aid the 
cause of intellectual culture. It fails sadly to accomplish 
what a good school system would do for the so-called 
Celestial Empire. The learned W. A. P. Martin, whose 
essays on "The Chinese, their Education, etc.," are espe- 
cially valuable, as he is the president of Tungwen Col- 
lege, Peking, and may be considered a high authority, has 
thus written : " Of those who can read understandingly, 
the proportion is greater in towns than in rural districts. 
But striking an average, it does not, according to my 
observation, exceed i in 20 for the male sex and one in 
10,000 for the female — rather a humiliating exhibit for a 
country which has maintained for centuries such a mag- 
nificent institution as the Hanlin Academy." Mr. Martin, 
however, points out various ways in which the Chinese 
civil-service system enlarges the liberties of the people, 
strengthens the state, gives occupation to certain restless 
and aspiring characters, and secures not only tranquillity 
to the public, but the very existence of the government. 
He argues that without such a system there would be 
strife and bloody revolution in the great Oriental Em- 
pire. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 343 

The Chinese civil service wisely provides, in some in- 
stances, that a greater or less number of men who pass a 
good examination shall be classed as " ready for office," 
and as vacancies occur lots are impartially drawn, to settle 
which one shall take a position which needs to be filled. 
In any civil service much care should be exercised not 
to tempt youth to endeavor to pa&s examinations which 
are so difficult as to be likely to injure their health. In 
recent years England and some other nations have 
adopted civil-service systems, which, it is believed, have 
been instrumental in helping to a highly important degree 
the interests of education. 

Jefferson for many years was deeply interested in the 
work of establishing a public-school system for Virginia. 
Some of his views respecting the course which it would 
be wise for the State to pursue will presently be here 
presented. He was, as has already been stated, a mem- 
ber of the State's " Literary Fund." .In the year 1816, 
the Legislature of Virginia requested the president and 
directors of the Literary Fund to favor it with a care- 
fully prepared report on a system of public instruction 
calculated to give effect to the appropriations of money 
which the State had already provided for public schools. 
The Legislature also desired recommendations respecting 
the establishment of colleges and a university. In the 
report which the president and directors sent to the 
Legislature it was stated that, " in all enlightened coun- 
tries a national education has been considered one of the 
first concerns of the Legislature, and intimately connected 
with the prosperity of the State." As the report pro- 
ceeded it alluded especially to primary schools: "The 
object of primary schools," it said, "is to have a school so 
convenient to each citizen that his children may be 
taught the rudiments of learning. It would be a melan- 



344 ^^ AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

choly reflection," it added, " if a single youth of our 
country should, from poverty, he deprived of every ray 
of knowledge. And yet," it continued, "how many 
hundreds, of perhaps the first geniuses of our land, are 
condemned to grope out their lives in a state of intellec- 
tual darkness. To obviate this calamitous state of things 
must be the object of the primary schools." With this 
report the gentleman managing the Literary Fund pre- 
sented the Legislature of Virginia with a very expensive 
school system for the State. Before acting on the school 
bill the Legislature published Jefferson's school bill of the 
year 1779 and a long letter which he had written respect- 
ing education to Mr. Peter Carr. In the year 18 17 Jeffer- 
son draughted another educational bill. In a foot-note to 
one of the sections of the bill he alluded to the tax that 
would be required to support such a system of public 
instruction, — adding, "if a tax can be called that which 
we give to our children in the most valuable of all 
forms, that of instruction." * Alluding to a certain pro- 
vision of the bill in a foot-note, he made a remark for 
which his friends feared that the people of Virginia were 
not prepared. In this foot-note, he said : " What is pro- 
posed here is to remove the objection of expense, by 
offering education gratis, and to strengthen parental 
excitement by the disfranchisement of his child while 
uneducated. Society has certainly a right to disavow 
him, whom it, offers and is not permitted to qualify for 
the duties of a citizen. If we do not force instruction, 
let us at least strengthen the motive to receive it when 
offered." In this educational bill Jefferson provided that 
women who could not read should not be recognized as 
citizens of Virginia. The closing words of section 5 * of 
this bill read thus : " And it is declared and enacted, that 

* " Jefferson's Works, " vol. ix., p. 493. 



OF THE UNITED STA TES. 345 

no person unborn or under the age of twelve years at the 
passing of this act, and who is compos mentis, shall, after 
the age of fifteen years, be a citizen of this Commonwealth 
until he or she can read readily in some tongue, native or 
acquired." 

Jefferson by providing that no one, whether man or 
woman, should possess certain privileges of citizenship 
in Virginia, would touch a subtle spring of action in the 
feelings of a people. The mental horizon of many illiter- 
ate parents is so sadly circumscribed that they do not 
even know of the intellectual realms which would be 
thrown open to their children were they possessed of a 
knowledge of letters. The distinguished writers on politi- 
cal economy, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, have 
recognized this ignorance on the part of many parents, 
and have given it as one of the reasons why governments 
should support public schools. Jefferson's plan would 
create such a motive for sending youth to school, or 
otherwise providing to a certain degree for their instruc- 
tion, that even the lowest grade of human intelligence 
would be apt to feel to some extent its force. Should 
there be found, however, parents so dead to the interests 
of their offspring, their boys would in time have brought 
home to them the fact that an inability to read and write 
had been branded with disgrace, and that they had a 
strong motive for acquiring useful knowledge. Even the 
timid girl who realized that she was debarred from certain 
important privileges, among which would sometimes, 
perhaps, be the owning, in her own right, of property, 
would be encouraged to herself seek the instruction which 
it might be necessary for her to have to acquire the rights 
of citizenship in a commonwealth. 

Some distinguished statesmen, while keenly realizing 
the importance to a republic of public schools, have 



346 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

not in an unqualified manner given their assent to the 
belief that no one should be allowed to vote who could 
not read. The learned Dr. Benjamin Rush, a patriot of 
whom any nation might be proud, having written to 
John Adams thus, " Suffrage, in my opinion, should 
never be permitted to a man that could not write or 
read," the cautious John Adams replied to him under 
date of August 28th, 181 1 : " Free schools, and all schools, 
colleges, academies and seminaries of learning, I can rec- 
ommend from my heart ; but I dare not say that a suffrage 
should never be permitted to a man who cannot read and 
write. What would become of France if the lives, for- 
tunes, character, of twenty-four millions of people who can 
neither read nor write, should be at the absolute disposal 
of five hundred thousand who can ? " 

Undoubtedly, Adams was right in withholding his assent 
to the belief that no one should be allowed to vote who 
could not read and write in a land such, as in his day, was 
France. In a country in which only one out of two or 
three hundred of the inhabitants can read, — as according 
to some authorities was the case in some parts of Europe 
when the Romish hierarchy was enabled to keep the edu- 
cation of youth in its own hands, — it might be very dan- 
gerous to entrust the very few who could read and write 
with absolute power. It might happen that entire com- 
munities would be destitute of a single person acquainted 
with letters or who possessed any knowledge of the science 
of government. Despots might endeavor to keep the peo- 
ple illiterate in order to retain power in their own hands. 
When a people, however illiterate, have to vote upon 
questions, they naturally discuss them among themselves. 
Such discussions, at least in, some instances, excite curi- 
osity and implant a desire among some of them to im- 
prove their minds. The most unlettered of men if injured 



OF THE UNITED STA TES. 347 

too boldly would, under certain circumstances, quickly learn 
enough to use their ballots in their own defence. It might 
even happen that reformers would arise among them who 
would counteract, to some extent, the influence of dema- 
gogues and exert a good influence in the communities in 
which they reside. Where every one is allowed to vote, 
intelligent citizens have a special interest, as a matter of 
self-defence, in providing instruction for the untaught, — 
indeed they have weighty reasons for establishing schools 
which they would not have if they knew that they were 
free from the danger flowing from people's voting who 
were even unacquainted with the alphabet. Jefferson's 
idea, however, was that schools should be established in 
every neighborhood and that youth should be made to 
feel that it was a duty which they owed to their country 
to attend them, and that if they neglected to attend the 
schools and thus, to some extent, qualify themselves for 
citizenship, they were, as long as they remained illiterate, 
not to be entrusted with the control of public affairs. 

As a rule, in a State such as Massachusetts, youth 
ought not to grow up illiterate. The fact that a youth 
of Massachusetts is illiterate is a proof that he has not 
obeyed the school laws of the State. For the same reason 
that children are not allowed to hold ofUce and to legislate 
for the State, men who are unable to read the Constitution 
of Massachusetts — are, in short, as illiterate as babies — 
are not allowed to vote. A paragraph of the Constitution 
of Massachusetts reads thus: " No person shall have the 
right to vote or be eligible to office under the Constitution 
of this Commonwealth, who shall not be able to read the 
Constitution in the English language, and write his name ; 
provided however, that the provisions of this amendment 
shall not apply to any person prevented by a physical dis- 
ability from complying with its requirements, nor to any 



348 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

person who now has the right to vote, nor to any persons 
who shall be sixty years of age or upwards at the time 
that this amendment shall take effect." 

Jefferson, in the educational bill which he draughted in 
the year 1817, incidentally alluded to the question whether 
the rights of parents were infringed upon by obligatory 
school laws. In a quite lengthy foot-note to section 5 
of his bill, he said : " A question of some doubt might 
be raised on the latter part of this section, as to the rights 
and duties of society towards its members, infant and 
adult. Is it a right or a duty in society to take care of 
their infant members in opposition to the will of the 
parent ? How far does this right and duty extend ? — 
to guard the life of the infant, his property, his instruc- 
tion, his morals ? The Roman father was supreme in all 
these : we draw a line, but where ? — public sentiment does 
not seem to have traced it precisely." * Upon these ques- 
tions Jefferson did not dwell at length in his bill, but 
contented himself with intimating, that if no one should 
be allowed to enjoy citizenship who was illiterate, the cases 
in which youth would not learn to read would be rare. 

Quite a large number of States, and England and 
many European countries, and even the people of Japan, 
have now obligatory school laws. There are many argu- 
ments which can be justly urged in their favor. People 
who are compelled to pay taxes for the support of free 
schools, on the ground that it is of vital importance to the 
well-being of society that youth should receive instruction, 
naturally expect that the State will see to it that the 
money is expended for the purpose for which it is col- 
lected. If the English people should find that their 
royal family was growing up utterly illiterate, and that 
the one who was to be their sovereign was not even able 

* See " Jefferson's Works," vol. ix., p. 493. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 349 

to read and write, Americans would applaud their wisdom, 
as far as it went, if they should insist that the future ruler 
of Great Britain should receive a certain degree of in- 
struction. In the United States the people are them- 
selves possessed of sovereign power, and, if incapable of 
wisely acting on certain occasions, may do irreparable 
injury to their Republic. The jury system in the United 
States makes it peculiarly important to all classes of 
people that their neighbors should be possessed of in- 
telligence, as might easily be feelingly illustrated. Com- 
pulsory school laws have been found to do a vast amount 
of good in cities, as has been illustrated in a very interest- 
ing manner by the records of crime in police courts. 
How quickly youth who are neglected in cities become 
criminals, and frequent recruiting dens of crime, where 
they learn as much evil as they would have acquired good 
in well-ordered schools, is a subject that would be found 
to be the more interesting the better it was understood. 
Schools would be, to a great degree, useless if they were 
not attended by youth. It has been found by experience 
— and indeed a thoughtful person can readily understand 
that such must be the case — that if scholars are frequently 
absent, they often receive but comparatively little benefit 
from the best of schools. They cannot keep up with 
their classes, and it is not right that their classes should 
be kept back for them. Something needs to be done to 
prevent young people from acquiring habits of irregularity 
in their attendance at their lessons. In the United States 
there are many people — some of them poor foreigners — 
who are disposed to be negligent in attending to the 
educational needs of their children. Some of them, it is 
to be feared, have no sensible idea of the value to their 
offspring of an acquaintance with letters. They live in 
neighborhoods where it is made the birthright of youth 



350 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

to have certain educational advantages. But these peo- 
ple—many of whom are well-meaning, and have lovable 
children in whose welfare they are tenderly interested — 
often remain ignorant of the beneficent school provision 
which has been made by law in behalf of youth. Where 
there are no wise truancy laws it is not the business 
of any one to even tell them where a school-house is to 
be found. Wise truancy laws give a certain degree of 
vigor to a school system, and thus, as well as in various 
other ways, exert a healthful influence upon society. 
Without them it is perhaps often impossible for a State 
to properly guard the interests of youth and its own 
safety. However well disposed American parents are, as 
a rule, towards their children, it is necessary that the 
statesman should bear in mind that the children of the 
drunkard and of the reprobate have a hard enough lot 
without being compelled to grow up destitute of school 
instruction, and that to stake the school instruction of a 
republic's future rulers and mothers upon the considera- 
tion of such parents would be to endanger the public 
welfare. To maintain that a State has not the right 
to insist upon its youth acquiring a certain amount of 
useful knowledge, would be to maintain a doctrine re- 
specting the freedom of the individual will which might 
lead to lawlessness and anarchy. Society has rights and 
responsibilities as truly as have individuals. As has been 
said, however, Jefferson believed that if a State made 
adequate provision for public instruction, and then al- 
lowed no one born after a certain period to enjoy certain 
rights of citizenship, that even without laws requiring 
youth to attend schools, the number of illiterate men and 
women would be small. 

In modern times many of the States provide in their 
Constitutions for the cherishment of the interests of 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 35 I 

public education. Jefferson in his " Notes on Virginia," 
which, although published when he was in France, were 
mostly written during the war for independence, pointed 
out that Virginia should provide in her Constitution for a 
public-school system. In this book he pointed out how 
necessary it was to a people who wished to enjoy the 
blessing of civil liberty to provide for the public instruc- 
tion of their youth, and gave an outline of a school 
system which it was proposed that Virginia should adopt. 
This outline was in reality in part the school bill which he 
had himself, amid much applause, introduced into the 
Assembly of Virginia in the year 1778. When he was in 
France at the period when the French Revolution was 
about being inaugurated, — a revolution which was to give, 
birth to wars in which perhaps not less than ten millions 
of human lives were to be lost, — he was visited by Lafay- 
ette and by a number of statesmen who were deeply 
interested in securing to the French people a republican 
form of government. It is interesting to observe that the 
memorable Constitution which Lafayette and his col- 
leagues helped to give France contained provisions for 
public education which so much resembled Jefferson's bill 
for the diffusion of knowledge in Virginia, that one may 
naturally infer that that part of the Constitution for the 
French Republic was suggested by the Virginian states- 
man. When Jefferson became President of the United 
States he wished to see the federal government doing 
more for the cause of education throughout the length 
and breadth of the United States than it was doing. In 
two annual messages he made suggestions to Congress 
respecting amending the national Constitution so as to 
secure to the youth of the Republic certain educational 
advantages. In his last annual message to Congress he 
thus spoke : " The probable accumulation of the surpluses 



352 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

of revenue beyond what can be applied to the payment of 
the public debt, whenever the freedom and safety of our 
commerce shall be restored, merits the consideration of 
Congress. Shall it lie unproductive in the public vaults ? 
Shall the revenue be reduced ? Or shall it not rather be 
appropriated to the improvement of roads, canals, rivers 
and education, and other great foundations of prosperity 
and union under the powers which Congress may already 
possess, or such amendment of the Constitution as may be 
approved by the States." From these words of Jeffer- 
son's one might not be able to form a decided opinion as 
to whether he had in view simply the founding of a great 
national university at Washington, — a favorite project 
with him, — or the aiding of all the States in the work 
of supplying educational advantages for their youth. In 
private letters, however, he spoke with a freedom that was 
highly interesting to friends of national education. To 
Monsieur Dupont de Nemours, who it will be remembered 
had written a book at the instance of Jefferson, on na- 
tional education for the United States, he thus, under 
date of April 15th, 181 1, wrote: " I keep up my hopes 
that if war [with Great Britain] be avoided, Mr. Madison 
will be able to complete the payment of the national 
debt within his term, after which one third of the present 
revenue would support the government. * * * Our reve- 
'nues once liberated by the discharge of the public debt, 
and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, &c., and 
the farmer will see his government supported, his children 
educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by 
the contributions of the rich alone, without his being 
called upon to spare a cent from his earnings. The path 
that we are now pursuing leads directly to this end, which 
we cannot fail to attain unless our administration should 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 353 

fall into unwise hands." * Jefferson in his desire to see the 
national government devoting a part of its resources to 
the support of public schools, it is to be feared went too 
far, when he pictured the public schools supported en- 
tirely by means derived from the national government. 
He would, one may readily infer, have wished the United 
States government, by wise legislation, to do for all the 
States what some State governments, by a wise use of 
State school funds, have done for their counties and 
townships, — help set in motion the wheels of local 

government. __^ — ■ ' 

Before considering, for a few moments, the question 
whether Jefferson's suggestion that the Constitution of 
the United States should be amended so as to make it 
the specific duty of the national government to aid the 
States in securing to all American citizens the blessing of 
at least a certain degree of intellectual culture, it may be 
interesting to notice what Jefferson, as President of the 
United States, did do towards rendering national aid 
to the cause of public education. On March 3d, 1803, 
he signed a bill by which public land was set apart for a 
university to be establislied in Ohio. On the same date 
he signed a bill by which it was provided that in the 
public domain south of the State of Tennessee, there 
should be land appropriated for a college, and every section 
of land numbered 16 in every township was consecrated 
to the support of common schools. For the use of the 
college — which as a compliment to Jefferson Congress 
named "Jefferson College" — thirty-six sections of land 

* About the same time that this letter to Dupont de Nemours was written, 
Jefferson wrote a letter to Kosciuszko, — a letter which has already been 
quoted in the first chapter of this volume, — in which he used almost the same 
words respecting the national governments aiding the cause of public educa- 
tion, as those which he addressed to Dupont de Nemours. 



354 ^^ AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

were appropriated, — an appropriation which was increased 
under President Monroe's administration. On March 
26th, 1804, Jefferson signed a bill which provided that 
not only in every township in what was then Indiana 
Territory section 16 should be devoted to school pur- 
poses, but that three entire townships should be reserved 
" for the use of a seminary of learning." On April 
i6th he signed a bill by which one hundred thou- 
sand acres of land in Tennessee were set apart for 
the use of two colleges. Another one hundred thousand 
acres of land, with certain wise conditions attached to the 
appropriation, were set apart, as the bill read, " for the 
use of academies, one in each county in said State, to be 
established by the Legislature thereof." At the same time 
an appropriation of land was made, to which wise conditions 
were, by the national government, attached, for common 
schools. Jefferson also had the honor of signing the bill 
by which the military academy of West Point was founded. 
Without pausing to point out all the ways in which Jefferson 
when President of the United States may be considered 
to have helped in inaugurating a policy by which the 
national government has aided States to establish and 
maintain school systems, it may here be noticed that on 
February 27th, 1806, a report was presented to the House 
of Representatives by one of its committees, an extract 
from which read thus : " Your committee are of the 
opinion [that] it ought to be a primary object with the 
General Government to encourage and promote education 
in every part of the Union, so far as the same can be con- 
sistent with the general policy of the nation, and so as 
not to infringe the municipal regulations that are, or may 
be, adopted by the respective State authorities on the 
subject. * * * The national legislature has, by several of 
its acts on former occasions, evinced in the strongest 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 355 

manner its disposition to afford the means of establishing 
and fostering with a liberal hand such public institutions." 
Soon after this report was made in Congress, Jefferson, as 
will presently be seen, signed a bill making an immense 
appropriation of land for school purposes. It will be 
remembered that under Jefferson's administration — 
largely if not altogether through his personal influence — 
the United States obtained from France a territory em- 
bracing 1,124,682 square miles. At the time of this pur- 
chase the area of the United States was but about 820,000 
square miles ; thus by one act the area of the United 
States was more than doubled. On April 21st, 1806, when 
a part of this new and vast territory was being opened for 
settlement, Jefferson afifixed the executive signature to a 
bill which not only reserved section i6 of every township 
for the support of common schools in each township, but 
also devoted an entire township for, in the words of the 
bill, " a seminary of learning." This appropriation for a 
seminary of learning was increased under Madison's 
administration. 

And now to return to Jefferson's suggestion, that an 
amendment be made to the Constitution of the United 
States by which the national government shall be specifi- 
cally authorized to co-operate with the States in the great 
work of securing to American youth the privilege of 
acquiring a certain degree of culture. The independence 
in certain respects of States, and of townships, and the 
nationality of them all united under one government, are 
features of the polity of the people of the United States 
which should be viewed in a comprehensive manner by. 
the student of the science of government. The securing 
of a knowledge of letters to any section of the United 
States may justly be deemed to be a matter worthy of 
national concern, no less truly than of local interest. 



356 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

American citizens, it is to be feared, are in danger of con- 
fining their attention too much to only what transpires 
within the boundaries of the county, or of the State, in 
which they reside, and of not giving to a proper degree 
attention to the affairs of a great RepubHc, — a RepubHc 
destined, it may be, to become continental in its extent. 
The thoughtful statesman should be reminded that it is 
highly important at times that his vision should sweep 
over the entire United States, and that he should recog- 
nize that in some respects the national Republic should 
be considered in its entirety. However simple to an 
American citizen may appear the form of government of 
the United States, a European might well think it strange 
to be told that every State is an aggregation of lesser 
republics, every county a group of self-governing units, 
and that all the States united form a great national 
Republic, and that each of these republics has- a sphere 
of action of its own, and yet is designed to work in perfect 
harmony with every other unit of the national Republic. 
There are various elementary principles upon which 
republics are founded. For example, all men are supposed 
to stand upon an equal footing. Very much as men unite 
to carry on a business, or to accomplish some undertaking 
which singly they could not execute, so people unite to 
accomplish certain ends conducive to their convenience, 
— or, in other words, establish a commonwealth. They 
unite, although wisely reserving to themselves certain 
specified rights, with the same freedom that a Pagan, a 
Mohammedan, and a Christian might unite to move out 
of a comm'on pathway a stone which was too heavy for 
any one of them to alone move. As business men, when 
forming themselves into a company to carry on a busi- 
ness, have partnership papers in which they carefully 
guard certain rights and specify the purposes for which 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 35/ 

they join themselves together, so do the jfbople of an 
American State and of the United States have partner- 
ship papers, or, in more common phrase, a " Constitu- 
tion." The Constitution of Massachusetts thus speaks of 
a State: "The body poHtic is formed by a voluntary 
association of individuals. It is a social compact, by 
which the whole people covenants with each citizen and 
each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be 
governed by certain laws for the common good." The 
Constitution of Maryland declares : " That all government 
of right originate from the people, is founded in compact 
only, and instituted solely for the good of the whole. 
* * * " It may be remembered that the American 
citizen has a citizenship common to a State, and to a 
national, government. 

In the United States it is realized that, as a company of 
business men might provide that the sons of the members 
of the company should have provided for them certain 
educational advantages, and should be admitted as part- 
ners into the firm provided that they acquired a certain 
degree of knowledge to enable them to do a worthy part 
in carrying on the business, so the people of a republic 
can incorporate in their constitution a provision that no 
one shall be invested with the responsibilities of citizen- 
ship until he has acquired, to at least a certain degree, a 
knowledge of reading and writing. 

It is one of the happy characteristics of the form of 
government established in the United States, that the 
national government itself can profit by experiments 
made by States in the art of government. At the 
present day a large number of States provide in their 
constitutions for public schools. During the war for 
Independence — at about the same time that Jefferson 
brought forward his first educational bill for Virginia — 



358 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

John Adam? draughted a provision for the Constitution 
of Massachusetts, by which it has been made the duty 
of all who subscribed to that Constitution to cherish the 
interests of learning in that State. Perhaps to no other 
one cause has Massachusetts been more indebted for its 
success in maintaining its system of local self-government 
than to its constitutional requirements respecting the 
interests of education. If provisions in a State Consti- 
tution for the interests of learning do much good, one 
might hope that American statesmanship would be equal 
to framing a wise provision for the national Constitution 
which would help to secure a certain degree of learning 
to all American citizens. 

At the time that Jefferson published in his " Notes on 
Virginia " the opinion that Virginia should provide in her 
Constitution for a public-school system, her counties were 
practically as far apart as are States and Territories at the 
present day. There were then no railroads, no steam- 
boats, no telegraphs, and, comparatively speaking, there 
were few roads of any kind. Far more easily could the 
government of the United States encourage, and aid in 
various ways, States and Territories to cherish the inter- 
ests of learning, than could the government of Virginia, 
in Jefferson's day, aid counties to secure to their youth 
school instruction. Yet Jefferson argued ably even during 
the war for Independence for an educational provision in, 
the Constitution of his State. And when President of the 
United States it was but natural that he should suggest 
to Congress the wisdom of providing in the national Con- 
stitution for a yearly, special fund to be raised by duties on 
luxuries, with which to enable the national government to 
duly aid in the great work of securing school instruction 
to the youth of all parts of the Republic of the United 1 
States, 



OF THE UNITED STA TES. 359 

It is to be feared that nothing less than an amendment to 
the Constitution of the United States can be relied upon 
to secure to all sections of the national Republic a certain 
degree of intelligence. The federal government has in-| 
deed done much — though seldom, if ever, as much as it \ 
did under Jefferson's administration — in aiding States to 
establish and to maintain school systems. It has done 
enough to give some faint idea of how much good, there 
is reason to hope, would result if, by the Constitution of 
the United States, it was made the duty of the national 
government to wisely aid and encourage in a systematic 
manner the States and Territories in maintaining effective 
school systems. 

When it has been proposed that the government of the 
United States should aid the States in maintaining public- 
school systems, there have been at least some statesmen 
who have honestly questioned whether the national gov- 
ernment, notwithstanding the many precedents which 
have been established for its so doing, has authority to 
render such aid. Some critic of American history may 
even whisper that Jefferson was so deeply imbued with a 
sense of the importance to civil liberty of public schools, 
that he did not apply to the question. Has the United 
States government authority to cherish in an effective 
manner the interests of public education ? some of his 
own principles respecting the proper interpretation of the 
Constitution of the United States. Some of these states- 
men, while agreeing with Jefferson that at least a certain 
degree of intellectual culture is of vital importance to the 
citizens of a republic, have doubted whether they were 
at liberty to vote for even measures which were well 
designed to scatter light over States, some of which, as 
divulged by the United States census, were intellectually 
in such darkness that a majority of the voters could not 



360 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

write their names. Some of these statesmen, if there had 
been such a specific provision for education in the Consti- 
tution of the United States, as Jefferson believed that the 
best interests of the United States demanded that there 
should be, would have ranged themselves in the national 
Capitol among the warmest friends of public education. 

One may well wonder that any statesman should have 
objected to the national government's helping by an 
appropriation of money the Southern States to establish 
school systems at the close of the Civil War, when four 
millions of colored people were suddenly freed from the 
shackles of slavery and invested with the honors and du- 
ties, and the high responsibilities, of American citizenship. 
It was as though the Southern States had, at a time when 
they were greatly impoverished by the devastations of war, 
been suddenly inundated by a flood of African barbarism. 
The most precious interests of society, and of American 
civilization, were to a large extent in the power of a people 
who had been degraded by generations of bondage and of 
an enforced ignorance of even the alphabet. Local self- 
government in some of the Southern States was to a large 
extent impossible. Its forms, ii observed at all, were in many 
cases converted into instruments of danger to the people. 
A provision of the Constitution of the United States 
reads thus : " The United States shall guarantee to every 
State in this Union a republican form of government." 
Another provision, which should be read in connection 
with the one which has just been quoted, provides that 
the government of the United States shall be authorized, 
" To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for 
carrying into execution the foregoing powers and * * * 
all * ^ * powers vested in the Constitution in the gov- 
ernment of the United States, or in any department or 
office thereof." By these provisions of the Constitution 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 36 1 

of the United States, it is to be seen that no measures 
necessary or proper to secure to the States a republican 
form of government is unconstitutional. States, when in 
the power of hordes of people as unlettered as barbarians, 
ought hardly to be expected to possess a proper degree of 
civil liberty. States such as these might naturally expect 
the national government to guarantee to them a republi- 
can form of government by aiding them to establish edu- 
cational institutions for their youth.' The national gov-^ 
ernment cannot secure to States in such a situation a 
republican form of government by overrunning them with 
armies at a cost of many millions of dollars, nor by estab- 
lishing a military government over them. If Jefferson's 
most cherished convictions respecting the intimate rela- 
tionship which must exist between intellectual culture and 
civil liberty were well grounded, the national government 
can in no way known to political science guarantee to such ^ 
States a republican form of government, without seeing to * 
it that suitable provision is made for certain educational 
needs of their youth. 

By the United States census of 1880 the startling fact 
was brought to light that in eight of the Southern States 
the average of the white and colored voters united who 
confessed that they could not write their names was 45 
per cent.! As some of the people were too proud to 
acknowledge their illiteracy if they could do a very little 
writing, the number of unlettered voters was probably 
larger than the figures of the census indicated. In six- 
teen of the Southern States entitled to as many Senators 
in the national Capitol as any sixteen Northern States, 
at least 40 per cent, of the men were illiterates. These 
sixteen States represented jS per cent, of a majority of 
the Electoral College, which gives a President to the 
Republic of the United States. The people living in 



362 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

these States are citizens of the national Republic as well 
as of the States in which they live. These sixteen 
States can do much to direct the policy of the national 
government. 

In the year 1880 many millions of dollars were spent in 
some of the Northern States and in Western States in 
supporting common schools, high schools, colleges, and 
public libraries. In some of the States no one was al- 
lowed to vote who could not read and write. But the 
influence of any Northern State — no matter how many 
millions of dollars was spent in providing instruction for 
her youth — could be nullified in the United States Senate 
by even the votes of South Carolina, a State in which 
the majority of the voters were unable to write their 
names. In Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as in South 
Carolina, the majority of the people were colored. These 
colored people, it was found by the census, were indeed 
poor! It hardly needs to be pointed out that it is not 
strange that they were poor. Their fathers and mothers 
had watered the fruitful earth with their sweat, and at times 
with tears, while the lash might at any time fall heavily 
upon them, but by accursed laws they received no pay 
for their toil. The national government, by laws, known 
as " fugitive-slave laws," and by other cruel laws, helped 
to rivet upon them the shackles of a shameful bondage. 
These people, or their descendants, are to be numbered 
by millions. Although they are not armed with muskets 
yet they are armed with ballots, and thus in many locali- 
ties are in a certain sense masters of the white population 
— indeed they are a mighty poAver, if not the masters of 
the whites, in the politics of the United States. Unless 
they are helped to become intelligent American citizens 
they are sadly likely to help in various ways to drag 
down American citizenship to their own lowly level. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 363 

Impoverished by a devastating civil war, it has been 
difficult if not indeed impossible for some of the Southern 
States, to adequately provide school instruction for the 
floods of illiterate people which were suddenly made not 
only citizens of their own States but also citizens of the 
United States. A simple calculation of the cost of the 
many thousands of school-houses needed for the illiterate 
youth in the Southern States would show that to secure 
to these States good school systems is a work calling for 
the best talents of the highest statesmanship. The 
American citizen may well ponder over the fact that the 
vast host of unlettered people in the Southern States 
are not a mere local affliction. It is an evil which is 
only too likely to again and again in various ways affect 
sadly the fortunes and the civil-liberties of the people of 
the United States collectively considered. It is mani- 
festly of vast importance to the people of the United 
States, considered as a whole, that all American youth 
should have secured to them a certain amount of intel- 
lectual culture. A wisely framed provision in the Con- 
stitution of the United States, by which the national 
government would specifically be charged to duly cherish 
the interests of learning, would be perhaps the greatest 
safeguard which civil liberty and a republican form of 
government can ever have in the western hemisphere. 

One of the difficulties, perhaps the greatest difficulty, 
in the way of the Republic of the United States becoming 
continental in extent, is that the people of Mexico and 
of Central and of South America, and the people of 
most of the West India Islands, do not speak the English 
language. Indeed, large numbers of them cannot read in 
any language. Although in a republic blessed with a 
mechanism which secures to all its parts local self-govern- 
ment, the people of States whose languages differ may 



364 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

well be imagined enjoying very many great advantages by 
living in union with each other, yet statesmen, when taking 
into view not only the present time, but the years and 
ages which a well-ordered republic may endure, may well 
wish to secure to the hundreds of millions of people which 
are, let it be hoped, to people the United States, the 
inestimably great blessing of a common language — espe- 
cially one as rich in a noble and learned literature as is 
the English tongue. 

Jefferson, when President of the United States, writing 
to Monroe under date of November 24th, 1801, re- 
marked: "However our present interests may restrain 
us within our own limits, it is impossible not to look for- 
ward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will 
expand itself beyond those limits, and cover the whole 
northern, if not the southern continent, with a people 
speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, 
and by similar laws." Jefferson's vision of the English 
language covering a continent may, by wise statesman- 
ship, be made a reality. 

There was a period in a remote age when the human 
family spoke a common language. To-day, a traveller 
who takes a survey of the world, finds that a thousand 
and more languages — not to speak of dialects of these 
languages — are spoken on the earth. The man who 
writes a book in Europe, on even subjects of the greatest 
interest to his fellow-man, can communicate his thoughts 
to only the people occupying a small division of that con- 
tinent. A traveller in Europe at the close, one may 
almost say, of every day's ride on the railroad finds him- 
self surrounded by a people to whom he cannot speak 
intelligibly, and whose mode of speech he cannot under- 
stand. He is thus a stranger among a strange people. 

In the Empire of Austro-Hungary about twenty differ- 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 36$ 

ent languages and dialects were in use in the year 1880. 
In Russia, whose population in the year 1880 was about 
106,000,000 people, not less than forty different languages 
were spoken. The number of languages in Turkey may 
well very greatly amaze an American traveller. On the 
continent of Europe there are some sixty or more 
languages spoken. 

One may well consider how great would be the blessing 
to the people of Europe could they all speak a common 
language. Many of the prejudices, and estrangements, 
and emnities, which separate the nations of Europe would 
be removed. The people of all Europe would find them- 
selves cherishing a feeling of sympathy and of brother- 
hood for each other. 

In the states of India which are united under the 
name of the British Empire, forty or more languages and 
about one hundred and seventy dialects are spoken. 
One of these languages, however, the Hindi, is used by 
about 60,000,000 of people, and thus, although it is 
spoken by but a small fraction of the people of India, it 
maybe called one of the principal languages of the world. 
In different parts of China the dialects in use differ so 
greatly that a Chinese merchant travelling in different parts 
of his native land is very much in the same position as is 
an American travelling on the continent of Europe. He 
may learn how to speak several dialects, but to learn to 
speak them all he would find to be very difficult, or im- 
possible. As, however, the written language in use among 
the learned in China — who are but a small fraction of the 
population — is the same, the Chinese traveller can at 
times make himself understood by writing what he wishes 
to speak. A story is told of a devoted missionary who 
left America, or England, to bear to the people of China 
the elevating truths of the Christian religion. His heart 



366 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

being in his noble work, he spent years in endeavoring to 
quahfy himself to speak to the great Mongolian race. In 
preaching to the people of certain parts of China he found 
difficulty in conveying to them some of the great truths 
respecting the Almighty. After years spent in his great 
work, he made the sad discovery that the word which he 
had been employing to designate God was a word which 
the people in their language had given to one of their 
idols, and that thus, while faithfully endeavoring to act the 
noble part of spreading the elevating truths of Christian- 
ity, he had unwittingly been doing the opposite to what 
he had wished to do. Grand, indeed, would it be for the 
vast Chinese Empire if the statesmen of China could 
secure to the hundreds of millions of people in China a 
public-school system better than the present educational 
system of China, — could, indeed, by means of public 
schools secure to China a common language spoken in its 
purity. 

If a traveller surveys the continent of Africa he is soon 
made aware of the strange fact that the languages and 
dialects spoken within the bounds of the " Dark Conti- 
nent " are to be counted by scores, — indeed, one may say, 
by the hundred. 

When the American continent was discovered by 
Columbus, and long afterwards, almost every Indian tribe 
had a language of its own. The learned Bancroft has 
already catalogued six hundred different languages 
spoken by the Indians living between the points which 
are now known as Northern Alaska and Panama. While 
it may be true that some of these Indian languages might 
be characterized as dialects, yet the learned historian of 
the Pacific coast has probably come far short of giving a 
full catalogue of the Indian tribes of the American conti- 
nent. To-day one of the greatest difficulties in the way 



OF THE UNITED STA TES. 367 

of the moral elevation, and of the advancement in civiliza- 
tion, of many of the Indian tribes living within the borders 
of the Republic of the United States is that they speak 
what may be called a gibberish of their own and are unable 
to speak English. Naturally among the various tribal lan- 
guages there is a very limited literature. The missionary 
who goes among Indians who cannot speak English finds 
it often difficult or impossible to find any suitable words in 
a rude tribal language in which to speak to them of great 
truths which would awaken in their breasts the best of 
emotions. As the Indian population have not been repre- 
sented in the government of the United States, sadly few 
statesmen have duly considered how hard it is for their 
Indian brethren to rise above the degradation, and the 
cruel surroundings, which environ them as long as they 
are obliged to live practically prisoners upon reservations 
guarded, at great cost to the United States, by soldiers. 

Far too many of the Indians, owing to their not being 
able to speak the English language, are unable to acquire 
much knowledge that even American children acquire 
insensibly by hearing people conversing about them in 
English. Should the children of white parents be treated 
as the government of the United States, under a mistaken 
policy, has too often treated Indian tribes, such children 
would remain savages through life. One may well think 
how great would be the blessing to a large class of Amer- 
ican Indians who are growing up on reservations if they 
were compelled to go to public schools and to learn the 
English language. Happily, in recent times, at least some 
wise and highly praiseworthy efforts are being made by 
the United States government to found schools among 
these children of the plains and forests. Wise obligatory 
school laws may indeed be made a great blessing to 
them. 



'368 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

Strange it is that, within the borders of the United 
States, there should be youth under the special care of the 
government of the United States who are growing to 
manhood and to womanhood unable to speak the English 
language. This strange anomaly may be accounted for 
in various ways. The government of the United States 
has not felt, to the extent that it would have felt, if there 
had been a direct — a specific — provision in the federal 
Constitution such as Jefferson would have had it have, mak- 
ing it the duty of legislators duly to cherish the interests 
of public education throughout the length and breadth of 
the Republic. The Indians have had no representative of 
their number in Congress to remind the government 
of their condition. Although the policy by which Indians 
are kept upon reservations by force was supposed by 
Jefferson to be but a temporary policy, it has been con- 
tinued for many years, working cruel injury to great num- 
bers of Indians and costing the United States hundreds 
of millions of dollars. In some instances Indian youth, 
who have, under exceptional circumstances, received a far 
better education in some State institution of learning 
than is at present possessed by millions of citizens of the 
United States, they have been compelled to return to the 
wretched reservation on which they were born, there to 
drag out a miserable existence. By an unwise, and deeply 
lamentable, policy towards the Indians, the United States 
government has been obliged to employ, at an enormous 
cost, a part of its army in keeping the Indians in bar- 
barism on reservations, thus weakening the army of the 
United States in a manner which might be doubly costly 
to the Republic should it become engaged in a foreign 
war. It would not be strange if Indians should wish to 
ally themselves to almost any power Avhich would help 
them to be delivered from the thraldom in which they are 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 369 

forced to live. Sometimes when Jefferson thought upon 
the Indians of the United States, a grand vision passed 
before him — a vision which he nobly sought to make a- 
reality. As President of the United States, he wrote 
under date of February i8th, 1 803, to Col. Hawkins, who 
was charged by his administration with the care of the 
Indians, as follows: " Although you will receive through 
the ofificial channel of the War Office every communica- 
tion necessary to develop to you our views respecting 
the Indians, and to direct your conduct, yet, supposing it 
will be satisfactory to you, and to those with whom you 
are placed, to understand my personal dispositions and 
opinions in this particular, I shall avail myself of this 
private letter to state them generally. * * * In 
truth, the ultimate point of rest and happiness for them 
is to let our settlements and theirs meet and blend to- 
gether, to intermix, and become one people. Incor- 
porating themselves with us as citizens of the United 
States, this is what the natural progress of things will of 
course bring you, and it will be better to promote than to 
retard it. Surely it will be better for them to be identi- 
fied with us, and preserved in the occupation of their 
lands, than be exposed to the many casualties which may 
endanger them while a separate people. I have but little 
doubt but that your reflections have led you to view the 
various ways in which their history may terminate, and to 
see that this is the one most for their happiness." Jef- 
ferson's policy respecting the Indians as unfolded to Col. 
Hawkins was again repeated in an address which he made 
on May 4th, 1808, to some chiefs of the Cherokees. He 
said : " My children, I shall rejoice to see the day when 
the red-men, our neighbors, become truly one people with 
us, enjoying all the rights and privileges we do, and 
living in peace and plenty as we do." In another address 



370 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

which Jefferson made, as far back as the year 1781, to an 
Indian, he said : " You ask us to send you schoolmasters 
to educate your sons and the sons of your people. We 
desire above all things, brother, to instruct you in what- 
ever we know ourselves. * * * As soon as there is 
peace we shall be able to send you the best of school- 
masters." 

Passing from Jefferson's time to the present day, it may 
here be noticed that there were in the United States in the 
year 1889 about 12,000 Indian children attending schools. 
It is pleasant to be enabled to state that Cleveland, when 
President of the United States, had the high honor of 
inaugurating a beneficent policy, by which at least all 
Indian youth attending schools must be taught in 
English. 

Scarcely, if indeed ever, in the history of the world has 
there been a language spoken over as wide an area of the 
world as is the English tongue. It is spoken by a larger 
number of people professing the Christian religion than is 
any other language in the world. It has a vast and an 
inestimably valuable literature. It may be called one of 
the greatest of all the blessings which the people of the 
United States have received from the old world and 
from the by-gone ages. On the American continent — 
. to say nothing of old England and of Australia, and of 
various colonies of Great Britain — English is already 
spoken over an area about twice the size of the entire 
continent of Europe. Innumerable, and inestimable, are 
the advantages which the people of the United States 
reap from having such a common language. On the 
American continent one can travel from the far north to 
the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the 
Pacific main, and, except on some of the Indian reserva- 
tions, everywhere hold intelligent converse with his fel- 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 37 1 

low-man. Valuable information given to the printed 
page can be read within this vast area by all men. The 
English language in the United States is spoken, as a rule, 
with remarkable purity, a fact which may well cause one 
to ponder over the grandeur of the work accomplished by 
public schools, especially when it is duly borne in mind 
how many millions of American citizens were born in 
foreign lands, or are descended from people who have 
spoken a foreign language, and have emigrated to 
America. Youth of parents who have come from the 
old world have become assimilated with the people of 
the United States. 

If the English language is not spoken in the Southern 
States with all the purity that many a patriotic states- 
man could wish, it is largely because public education has 
not been looked after in these States, and by the national 
government, with that provident legislation which the best 
interests of the American continent demands that they 
should receive. Jefferson believed that republics should 
incorporate in their Constitutions provisions for securing 
to all their youth the blessing of school instruction. He 
wished to see the United States government supplied with 
a permanent fund — a fund which he suggested could be ! 
raised by a duty imposed upon luxuries — with which to 
aid, and to encourage, the interests of public education 11 
throughout the length and breadth of the Republic of the I 
United States. 

Such an educational fund as Jefferson wished to have 
secured to the United States government could be used 
in a manner which would not in the least interfere with 
the proper sphere of State governments, but would in a 
very wise and happy manner set in motion, and continually 
keep in motion, in all parts of the Republic, the wonderful 
mechanism of local self-government. He believed that 



372 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

as a State government should aim at wisely aiding, and 
encouraging, the establishment of institutions of learning 
throughout its length and breadth, and should see to it 
that every county within its borders provided for certain 
educational needs of its youth, so should the government 
of a vast Republic duly cherish and wisely aid the interests 
of learning throughout the wide domain over which its 
power extends. He believed that as a State should en- 
deavor to so legislate that every county within its borders 
should be made to realize that it had grave duties respect- 
ing the education of its youth to its fellow-counties, and 
to the State, so should the United States government 
endeavor to see to it that States realized that they had 
duties, in respect to the education of youth, to their fellow 
States. He believed that as a State should even provide 
that no one growing up illiterate in a county within its 
borders, where provision was made for his instruction, 
should be allowed to vote, so the government of the United 
States should insist that no man born after a suitable date, 
who refused to qualify himself for American citizenship, 
to at least the extent of learning how to read, should 
be allowed to influence national affairs by means of a 
ballot. 

The English language, even with all the aid that the 
highest statesmanship can secure it, will have a long and 
a severe struggle with various languages before it becomes 
universal on the American continent. The contest of 
the English with the languages spoken south of the Re- 
public of the United States will probably, however, be 
less severe than one might at first imagine. In the 
year i88o there were, it is supposed, in Mexico about 
9,389,461 people. Although among those who may be 
called the educated classes of Mexico Spanish is spoken, 
yet, it is interesting, as well as startling, to an American 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 373 

to notice that within the borders of Mexico thirty or 
more languages, and about ninety or more dialects, are 
spoken. The English language is thu^ enabled to meet 
in its advance a divided foe. If, in all parts of the 
United States public schools should flourish, while in 
Mexico the education of youth should be neglected, the 
peaceful triumph of the English tongue over the nu- 
merous languages and dialects of Mexico would be apt 
to be quite rapid. It might, indeed, be expected to be- 
come so should the people of Mexico and of the United 
States join hands in becoming one republic. South of 
Mexico lies the beautiful land of Guatemala, whose 
form of government is claimed to be, to a large extent, 
a copy of that of the Republic of the United States. In 
Guatemala there was, in the year 1880, probably a popu- 
lation of about 1,500,000 people. Of this population it 
has been estimated only 20,000 of the people were of 
pure Spanish origin. More than 900,000 of the people 
were what are called Indians, but of a much higher 
type of humanity than are the Indian tribes of North 
America. These Indians speak at least nineteen lan- 
guages, which a European author* divides into four 
■ distinct linguistic stocks greatly differing one from the 
other. In Central America, including Guatemala, in the 
year 1880 there were about 2,534,586 people, among 
whom quite a number of languages were spoken. South 
of the American isthmus stretches the great and mag- 
nificent land of South America, where a number of lan- 
guages are spoken — by many of the people in a very 
imperfect manner. One may well think of the many 
advantages the people of South America would e^joy if 
English were spoken throughout its length and breadth ! 

* Dr. Otto Stoll's work on the " Ethnography of Guatemala," Zurich, 

1884. 



374 ^^ AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

— or at least if that splendid land were a part of the 
Republic of the United States, and enjoyed the life- 
giving energy, and the unnumbered blessings, which 
might flow, under certain circumstances, from such a 
union ! 

To word, in the best manner, a provision for the Con- 
stitution of the United States, — a provision suited to 
securing to all parts of a vast Republic national encour- 
agement to duly provide for the education of youth 
who are to become American citizens, — much wisdom will 
be greatly needed. Grant, as President of the United 
States, presented to his country his views of what pro- 
visions respecting public schools should be added to the 
Constitution of the United States. In his annual message 
to Congress in the year 1875, he said : 

" I suggest for your earnest consideration, and most 
respectfully recommend it, that a constitutional amend- 
ment be submitted to the Legislatures of the several 
States, for ratification, making it the duty of each of 
the States to establish and forever maintain free public 
schools, adequate to the education of all the children in 
the rudimentary branches within their respective limits, 
irrespective of sex, color, birth-place, or religion, for- 
bidding the teaching in said schools of religious, atheis- 
tic, or pagan tenets, and prohibiting the granting of any 
school funds or school taxes, or any part thereof, either 
by legislative, municipal, or other authority, for the 
benefit or in aid, directly or indirectly, of any religious 
sect or denomination, or in aid or for the benefit of any 
other object, of any nature or kind whatever." At the 
close of his message. Grant named among his recapitula- 
tion of questions which he deemed, as he expressed it, of 
"vital importance," — questions with which Congress was 
expected to deal : 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 3/5 

1. " That the States shall be required to afford the 
opportunity of a good common-school education to every 
child within their limits." 

2. " No sectarian tenets shall ever be taught in any 
school supported in whole or in part by the State, nation, 
or by the proceeds of any tax, levied upon any commu- 
nity. Make education compulsory so far as to deprive 
all persons who cannot read and write from becoming 
voters after the year 1890 [that is fifteen years after the 
adoption of the amendment], disfranchising none, how- 
ever, on grounds of illiteracy who may be voters at the 
time this amendment takes effect." This recommenda- 
tion of Grant's, which has just been presented, did not, in 
some respects, include as much as Jefferson wished to see 
secured to his country. Jefferson wished the Republic of 
the United States to have secured to it, by a provision in 
its Constitution, a fund, to be obtained from the surplus 
in its treasury which he foresaw that it would have, — or 
from a revenue to be derived from a duty imposed upon 
luxuries imported into the United States, — with which 
to aid and to encourage, in a systematic manner, the 
establishment of public schools throughout the length 
and breadth of the Republic, and to also maintain a great 
national university. He believed that the national gov- 
ernment had a very important part to act in the great 
work of securing to the youth of all parts of the Republic 
of the United States a measure of education, as truly as 
have States and counties and school districts, in securing 
to youth living in all parts of their respective boundaries, 
a certain degree of school instruction indispensable to 
good citizenship in a republic. 

Jefferson, at times, indulged in bright hopes for the 
future of his country. Writing to Madison, under date 
of April 27th, 1809, he pictured the United States an- 



376 AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

nexing Cuba and all the territory north of the United 
States. He then said : '' We should have such an 
empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the 
creation ; and I am persuaded that no constitution was 
ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive 
empire and self-government," In another letter, written 
to his French friend, M. de Marbois, under date of June 
14th, 1817, Jefferson wrote: "I have much confidence 
that we shall proceed successfully for ages to come, and 
that, contrary to the principle of Montesquieu, it will be 
seen that the larger the extent of country, the more firm 
its republican structure, if founded, not on conquest, but 
in principle of compact and equality. My hope of its 
duration is built much on the enlargement of the re- 
sources of life going hand in hand with the enlargement 
of territory, and the belief that men are disposed to live 
honestly, if the means of doing so is open to them." 

Madison and Monroe, as well as JefTerson, — although 
they could have had but a faint idea of the wonders 
wrought by telegraphs and railroads, — were deeply im- 
pressed with the adaptability of a republican form of 
government to a very large area of territory. The learned 
Madison, writing when far advanced in years, — in the year 
1833, — after making a very able argument illustrating 
how well a representative government such as that of 
the United States was suited to be applied to a large 
territory, thoughtfully added: "It will not be denied, 
that the improvements already made in internal naviga- 
tion by canals and steamboats, and in turnpikes and 
railroads have virtually brought the most distant parts of 
the Union, in its present extent, much closer together 
than they were at the date of the Federal Constitution. 
It is not too much to say, that the facility and quickness 
of intercommunication throughout the Union is greater 



OF THE UNITED STA TES. 377 

now than it formerly was between the remote parts of the 
State of Virginia."* If Madison, one of the most gifted 
statesmen of the age in which he lived, could, when the 
invention of railroads was but in its infancy, thus write, 
it is not perhaps too much to say that when the railroad 
systems of North and South America are united by means 
of a railroad running longitudinally across the great 
American isthmus which, as a vast natural bridge, unites 
them, the American continent will be practically not as 
large, in various respects, as was the Republic of the 
United States before the days of railroads and of tele- 
graphs. And yet the area of the American continent, 
including the area of the West India Islands, is, as has 
been seen, about 15,099,480 square miles. 

The Republic of the United States may already be 
considered one of the wealthiest, if not indeed the 
wealthiest, power in the world. In the year 1884 its 
fortune, so to speak, — that is, the aggregate wealth of 
its citizens, — was estimated f to be two and one-fifth 
times as great as that of the German Empire's, and to 
be ten thousand million dollars larger even than the 
wealth of Great Britain. The United States, however, 
is a power which, happily for the peace of the world, 
confines its sphere of action to the political affairs of the 
western hemisphere. 

On the entire American continent in the year 1880, — 
including about 4,412,703 people in the vast area of 
Canada, and over 50,000,000 of people in the United 
States, and including about 4,412,703 people in the 
West India Islands, — there was a population of about 
99,417,524 people, — a number which is but a very small 
fraction of the hundreds of millions of people who may 

* Madison's Works, vol. iv., p. 329. 

f See the Scientijic American, number dated the 21st of September, 1889. 



37S AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION 

be expected to live on the American continent within the 
next few hundred years. In the year 1880 the population 
of America was less than was probably the population of 
Russia. It was many millions less than half of the number 
of people in the British Empire in India. It was but a 
small fraction of the population of the empire of China, — 
and yet the American continent is destined to become 
the home of a much vaster number of people, there is 
reason to believe, than the soil of Asia and Europe united 
can support. 

The day is fast hastening onward when all the West 
India islands — islands which aside from their commercial 
value are greatly needed by the United States for stra- 
tegic purposes — may, with Central and South America, 
be led, by natural laws of self-interest, to join the United 
States in forming a republic which will embrace the west- 
ern hemisphere. 

A continental republic involves the idea of a great union 
of American States under a constitution devised with 
wonderful wisdom to give effect to the just wishes, and to 
promote the happiness and the well-being, of American 
citizens. To picture such a republic in a worthy manner 
would require the noblest eloquence. One could wish to 
speak of how the almost boundless natural resources of 
the American continent would be evoked as if by magic ; 
how such a republic would become the home of friends 
of civil and religious liberty from all parts of the world ; 
how near to each other would be brought its most distant 
parts by means of railroads ; how when one State had 
any grievance against another it could, instead of main- 
taining a standing army which might be used against the 
liberties of the people, submit its cause before the Supreme 
Court of the United States — the most just and learned 
tribunal of arbitration that can be imagined. One could 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 379 

wish to speak of some of the innumerable advantages 
which the people of a hemisphere would realize by using 
a common coinage and enjoying with each other the freest 
trade imaginable, and how rich might be the constitutional 
provision made for the public instruction of youth destined 
to be citizens of America — indeed, for instruction which 
would greatly help to make the people of a continent 
homogeneous, and to imbue youth, in the best sense of 
the word, with American principles. One could wish to 
especially picture the happy working in all parts of a 
continent of a wonderfully well contrived — a sublimely 
beneficent — mechanism of self-government ; — but suffice 
it to say, that the world will, when such a republic is 
established, see with admiration one of the grandest 
achievements of American statesmanship. 

It may again be asked, Is it possible for American citi- 
zens to elaborate a practicable plan by which the blessing 
of school instruction will be secured to the youth of every 
part of a vast empire ? This is a question upon the solu- 
tion of which, it is highly probable, depends the destiny 
of the dearest interests of civil liberty in the new world. 
Happily, it is believed that this question can be answered 
in the affirmative. Yes, the present generation of Ameri- 
cans can, as far as it is possible for mortals to ensure 
blessings to their posterity, secure the happiness and 
well-being of the unnumbered millions of people who 
are to live on the western hemisphere. Let a wisely 
worded provision be incorporated into the Constitution 
of the United States, making it the specific duty of the 
national government to duly cherish the interests of 
learning in all the States and Territories beneath the 
American flag. Let the people in all parts of America 
take an intelligent and patriotic interest in seeing to it 
that the national and State governments and the humblest 



38o AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION. 

school districts shall, in the years to come, co-operate in 
happy harmony in cherishing, — each in its respective 
sphere, — the cause of true learning in the western hemi- 
sphere. In short, let all well-wishers of their country 
take something of the same praiseworthy interest in the 
education of youth as did Thomas Jefferson, and republi- 
can institutions may be expected to realize, even more 
than they do at the present day, a grand ideal of a 
noble destiny. 



THE END. 



INDEX. 



Abolition, 217, 218, 224, 243, 266, 

269, 271 
Adams, C. F., 135 ; John, 12, 16, 24, 

42, 171, 183, 346, 358; John Q., 

242 
Africa, 366 

Agriculture, study of, igs 
Alabama, illiteracy in, 302 ; slave law, 

299 
Alliance, Holy, 28, 29 
Almamon, Caliph, 149 
Alumni, N. C. University, 103 
Amendment to Constitution proposed 

by Grant, 374 
American state papers, 44 
Apparatus, philosophical, 160 
Arabic education, 150 
Arago, 278 

" Articles of Association," 215 
Astronomy, 153 
Austro-Hungary, 364 



B 



Baldwin, Judge, 40 

Barbour, Literary Fund, 328 

Barlow, 3 

Barrow, 267 

Barry, 115 

Bell, 95 

Benezet, 222 

Beugless, J. D., 136 

Bible, 33, 84, 104, 138, 145, 286, 310 

Bill, for better diffusion of knowledge, 

36, 114 ; against slavery, 244, 249 ; 

school, 1779, 1817, 344 
Black, Joseph, 55, 59, 61 
Black Belt, illiteracy in, 304 
Blaine, 92, 93 
Bland, 257 
Bolivar, 6 



Boulton, Matthew, 58 

Books, forbidden, 14 ; on government, 

for N. E., 166 
Boutwell, 97 
Botany, study of, 199 
Brazier, 147 

Breckenridge, Gen., 42, 124, 129 
Bright, John, 294, 333 
Bulls, 7, 137 
Bureau of Education, 31 
Burgoyne, 10 



Cabell, J. C, 38, 124, 126, 129, 321 

Cadiz, 16 

Calhoun, 276 

Calonne, 16 

Calvin, 5 

Cardinals, 89 

Carr, 6 

Carthagena, 13 

Cayenne, emancipation in, 17, 19 

Central America, 373 

Central College, 38 

Chadwick's estimate, loi 

Charlotteville, 40 

Chase, 344 

Chastellux, 251 

Chemistry, 159 

Chicago, 333 

China, 313, 339, 366 

Chiriqui Lagoon, 290 

Cholera, 159 

Church and State, in Spain, 28, 29 ; 

alliance of, 107, 137, 176 
Cincinnati, 333 ; society, 108 
Civil, liberty, I, 173 ; defined, 162 ; 

service, 85 ; abuses foreseen by 

Jefferson, 338 
Clarkson, 222 
Clay, 5, 21 
Clayton-Bulwer treaty, 293 



381 



382 



INDEX. 



Cleveland, 370 

Clinton, 326 

Coke, Gen., 129 

Coles, 253, 260, 278, 294, 301, 311 

Colet, 139, 141, 199 

Columbia College, 46, 173, 184 

Columbus, 102, 366 

Commission of Inquiry, 5 ; on Site for 
University, 40 

Confucius, 340 

Congress, 77, 80, 84, 92 ; library, 336 

Conspiracy, 90 

Constitutional provisions for educa- 
tion, 350, 353, 355, 356, 363, 368, 

371, 374- 379 
Continental Congress, enactment on 

schools, 248 
Convocation against heretics, 141 
Copernicus, 154 
Coray, 15 
Cornell, Ezra, 82 

Corporations, secular and religious, 85 
Cortez, 31, 32 
Cotton-gin, 96 
Coxe, Tench, 290 
Cuba, 220 ; annexation, 375, 376 
Curtis, G. W., 280 
Czatoryski, Adam, 29 

D 

Dade, 130 
Daguerre, 91 
Dana, 78, 88 
Daubney, 74 
Davis, Jeff., 276, 304 
Day, 70 
DeBrasa, 220 

Declaration of Independence, 214 
Delaware, illiteracy in, 306 
Denizon, 207 
Dexter Samuel, 226 
Dick, Thomas, 54 
Dolbear, 95 
Douglas, 281 
Draper, 91 
Dunglison, Dr., 258 
Dupont de Nemours, 9, 29 ; his plan 
for national education in U. S., 30, 

32, 34, 353 
Dwight, 71 

E 

Edinburgh University, 37 



Education, Bureau of, 31 ; secretary 
for, 31 ; primary, 67 ; not to be 
left to private effort, 113; of poor 
in Ken., 119 ; and duties on luxu- 
ries, 164 ; in slave States, 296 et 
seq.; a State duty, 312 ; compulsory, 

348 . 

Educational, advantages of American 
statesmen, 45 ; amendment to Con- 
stitution, 374, 375 

Electricity, 69, 75, 77, 81, 96,154, 159 

Elgin, Earl of, 87 

Eliot, Pres., 138 

Ellsworth, Miss, 80 

Engineers, 104, 112, 194 

English Bible, 9 

English, language, 363 ; professors, 
203 

Erasmus, 140 

Europe, languages, in, 365 



Ferdinand VII., 29 

Field, C. W., 87 

Florida, illiteracy in, 303 

Franklin, 10, 16, 24, 46, 60, 168, 243 

Franklin Institute, 75, 159 

Freedman's Bureau bill, 310 

French, Academy of Sciences, 77, As- 
sembly, 18, 22 ; language, 202 ; 
nobles, iio; people, 113; Revolu- 
tion, 9, 24, 26, 30 ; treasury, 30 

Frith, John, 143 

G 

Gail, 74 

Galileo, 102, 132, 153 

Galleja, 6 

Garfield, 31, 93, 134, 181 

Geneva, College, 37, 186 ; arbitration, 

50 
Geologists, 155 
Georgia, slave law, 297 ; illiteracy in, 

303, 304 

German language, 138 

Germany, emperor of, 19 ; indebted 
to Jefferson, 3 

Giles, 210 

Gillespje, 274 

Gilmer, 120 

Girls, reading a qualification for citizen- 
ship for, 344 



INDEX. 



383 



Gladstone, 132, 333 

Glasgow, 54 

Graham, Mme., 17 

Grammar school in Albemarle Co. , 37 

Gray, F. C, 275 

Greece, 15 

Greek and Latin, 133, 134, 135, 147 

Greenock, 54 ; library, 65 

Grocyn, 139 

Guanaxuato, 6 

Guatemala, 373 

Guizot, 32 ; history of education, 33 



H 



Hall, John, 72 

Hamilton, 19 

Hebrew, 136, 145 

Henry, 79, 83 

High schools, 66, 95, 104, 112, ir6, 

121 
Hindi, 365 
Hispaniola, 220 
History, teaching of, 174 ei seq. 
Holland, 53, 64 
Hollis, 166 

Houdetot, Mme. d', 32 
Hughes, T., 333 
Huguenots, 19, 222 
Humboldt, A., 2, 3, 7, 8, 78, 300 ; 

W., 2, 3 
Huss, 104 
Hutton, 30 



Ideal university, 131 

Illiteracy, Guizot on, 33 ; in Italy, 8g ; 

in Mass., 347 ; in United States in 

1870-1880, 307 ; in United States, 

361 
Illiterate nations, 35, 346 
Index expiirgatorius, Spanish, 14 
India, 365 
Indians, and English language, 367 ; 

in need of obligatory education, 367; 

policy towards, 368, 369 
Inquisition, 13, 14, 161 
Inventions, 53, 68 ; money value of, 

95, 99 
Italian language, 130, 138 
Iturbide, 25 



Jacobins, 18 

Jay, 13, 168, 218, 243 

Jefferson, on education and civil lib- 
erty, 12 ; to A. von Humboldt, 3 ; 
on New Spain, 4, 7, 8 ; sketch of 
Kosciuszko, 10 ; to Kosciuszko on 
priestcraft in New Spain, i2f-^o 
John Adams on slave trade, 16 ; to 
I^afayette on constitution for France, 
21, 22 ; to Lafayette on bigotry and 
self-government, 23 ; to John Adams 
on passive submission to kings and 
priests, 25 ; to Lafayette on free 
press, 28 ; to De Onis on education 
as qualification for citizenship, 29 ; 
requests Dupont de Nemours to pre- 
pare a plan for national education, 
30 ; enlightenment the true basis for 
government, 31 ; ignorance and free- 
dom incompatible, 35 ; signsbills for 
appropriations for universities and 
schools, 37 ; generosity to Central 
College, 38 ; to Virginia Legislature 
urging appropriations for the uni- 
versity, 38, 39 ; rector of the uni- 
versity, 41 ; urges the founding of a 
university in Washington, 44 ; his 
report on site for State university, 
48 ; on advantages of well directed 
education, 105 ; on the importance 
of the sciences, 107 ; to Wythe on 
ignorance and superstition, 113 ; on 
the men needed for a republic, 114 ; 
on primary schools, 124 ; his coad- 
jutors in founding the university, 
125 ; his hopes resting on the cause 
of learning, 127 ; on Cabell's re- 
tirement, I2g ; his fears for the 
university, 129 ; his self-sacrificing 
labors for the university, 131 ; on 
broadening the basis of educational 
establishments, 132 ; on electives, 
133 ; on Greek and Latin, 134, 147 ; 
to Brazier on the same, 147 ; on 
mathematics, 149 ; on sciences, in 
his Sixth Message, 156 ; interest in 
chemistry, 157 ; on study of science 
of government, 160 ; opposition to 
public debts, 165 ; his interest in 
study of history, 174 et seq.; to John 
Adams on courses of study, 183 ; 
consults T. Cooper on plan for uni- 



384 



INDEX. 



Jefferson {Co7ttmued). 

versity, 184 ; consults Pictet on the 
same, 185 ; his plan for transporting 
the Univ. of Geneva to Virginia, 
186 ; to Priestley on scheme for uni- 
versity, 187 ; on technical instruc- 
tion, 191, 193 ; on botany, 199 ; on 
study of languages, 201 ; on English, 
202; on physical culture, 203; vv^ishes 
to get English professors, 203 ; to 
Roscoe on the same, 205 ; to Eve- 
lyn Denizon, 207 ; Dunglison on, 
208; unsectarian, 210; abhorrence 
for slavery, 213 ; his essay on the 
" Rights of Englishmen," 213— pro- 
scribed, 214 ; draught of Declara- 
tion, 214 ; on the king of England, 
214 ; on importation of slaves, 216 ; 
plan for educating the colored peo- 
ple, 223 ; entertains Melbourn at 
Monticelio, 224 ; emancipation bill 
of 1767, 243 ; inherits but never 
buys slaves, 243 ; bill to exclude 
slaves from Western territory, 244 — 
its failure, 244 ; on abolition in Vir- 
ginia, 245 ; on colony at Muskin- 
gum, 247 ; on influence of slavery, 
249, 252 ; Coles to Jefferson, 255 ; 
Jefferson to Coles, 256 ; to Banna- 
ker, 267 ; to Holmes, 268 ; to Miss 
Wright on abolition, 269 ; quoted 
by Lincoln, 282 ; his provision for 
education of colored people, 301 ; 
to Washington on national instruc- 
tion, 312 ; on local government in 
N. E., 319; on schools and local 
government, 320 ; and the Literary 
Fund, 328 ; to Wyche on value of 
a library as educator, 331 ; offers his 
own library to governnient, 336 ; re- 
port of 1816 on public instruction, 
343; proposes gratuitous instruction, 
344 ; educational bill of 1817, 348 ; 
on national education, 351 ; on de- 
voting a portion of national revenue 
to education, 352 ; suggests educa- 
tional amendment to Constitution, 
353 ; signs bills for universities in 
Ohio and Tenn., 353 ; Jefferson 
College, 354 ; signs bill for support 
of common schools, 355 ; argues for 
educational amendment in Va. con- 
stitution, 358 ; to Monroe on spread 



of English, 364 ; Indian policy op- 
posed to reservations, 369; education 
for Indians, 370 ; desire for estab- 
lishment of national-school fund, 

375 
Jerome of Prague, 104 
Jeronimites, 220 
Jesuits, 19, 123 
Johnson, 86 
JuUien, 302 
Jury system, 348 

K 
Kames, 168 

Kansas, progress of, 328 
Kentucky, 119, 124; school system, 

115 ; illiteracy in, 306 
Kepler, 154 
King, Rufus, 246 
King's College, see Columbia 
Knox, 54 
Kosciuszko, 10, 11, 173 



Lafayette, 14, 16, 18, 21 ; Mme., 19 

Lamps, see petroleum 

Las Casas, 219 

Latent heat, 55 

Lawyers, 104, 112 

Leland's " Jack Nips," 226 

Lewis, S. S., 120 

Libraries, 193, 206, 329, 331 ; Con- 
gress, 336 

Lieber, 162 

Lima, 13 

Linacre, 139 

Lincoln, 249, 278, 281, 290, 291 ; 
on reading the Bible, 310 

Lincoln, Earl of, 87 

Livingston, E., 209 

Local government in N. E., 319, 360 

Locomotive, Watts', 67, 105 

Louisiana, purchase of, 30 ; slave law, 
299 ; illiteracy in, 303 ; colored 
population, 362 

Louis Philippe, 21 

Louis XVI., 18; XVIII., 20 

Lukens, 75 

Luther, 104, 145 

M 
McClellan, G. B., 286 



INDEX. 



385 



McLean, 71 

Madison, 38, 115, 119, 120, 171, 200, 
260, 289, 375, 376 

Manzanedo, Bernardino de, on slavery, 
220 

Marbois, de, 376 

Marie Antoinette, 18 

Marshall, on value of the cotton-gin, 
96, 226, 288 

Martin, V., 220 

Martin, W., 342 

Massachusetts, 125, 217, 358 ; consti- 
tution of, 347, 358 

Mathematics, 149 

Medicine, 194, 208 

Medill, J., 334 

Melbourn, 224 

Meusnier, de, 245 

Mexico, 8, 13, 223, 373 

Military evolutions, 203 

Mill, J. S., 345 

Minneapolis, 333 ■ 

Mississippi, illiteracy in, 303 ; colored 
population in, 362 

Missouri, illiteracy in, 306 ; com- 
promise, 249 

Mitchell, 203 

Monopoly, 85 

Monroe, 5, 38, 201, 252, 265, 288, 
354; doctrine, 5, 164, 242, 290, 
364, 376 

More, Sir T., 140 

Morse, 68, 69 ; at Yale, 70, 71, 72 ; 
on his invention, 73 ; to Woodbury, 
74 ; before Congress, 77, 79, 80, 81 ; 
to Pres. Day, 88, 92 

Motley, 7, 176 

Muller, Max, 138 

Mussulmans, 149 



N 



Napoleon I., 4, 18, 24, 78 ; III., 79 
National aid to education, 309, 352, 

354. 371 ! State schools, 360 ; uni- 
^versity, 44, 167, 337 
Navigation, 102 
New England townships, 316 
New Granada, 293 
New York, school laws, 325 ; slavery 

in, 217 
Nicaragua, 293 
Nicholas, Gov., 320 



Northampton, Marquis of, 87 

North Carolina, sluve law, 298 ; il- 
literacy in, 303, 305 

" Notes on Virginia," 2, 35, 64, 179, 
249 

Novels, 335 

O 

Obligatory education, 348 
Onis, de, 28 



Pagonel, 26 

Parthenon, see Lewis 

Patterson, R. M., 75 . 

Petroleum, 97, 98, 99 

Philadelphia, 46 

Photography, 91 

Physicians, 104, 112, 114 

Pickering, 246 

Pictet, Prof., 185 

Pim, Commander, 9 

Pitt, 45 

" Pocket Dagger of the Christian 

Soldier," 144 
Poland, 10 
Polk, 81 

Pope, 89, 137, 144, 149, 151, 220 
Portuguese, 138 
Price, 252 
Priestley, 186 
Priests, 4, 7, 9, 12, 14, 25, 90, 107, 

113, 114, 158 
Prime, L, 70 
Prince of Wales, 70 
Princeton College, 103 
Prussia, school system, 2, 3, 205 



Quakers, 266 



R 



Railway, intercontinental, 377 

Ramsay, 169 

Randolph, John, 24 ; T. H., 57 ; P., 
58 

Reed, 244 

Reformers, 104 ; on classics, 146 

Renwick, 71 

Report on university, 49, 200 

Republic, principles of, 9, 356 ; con- 
tinental, 378 



386 



INDEX. 



Republican form of government, 362 ; 

institutions, 380 
Rice, 125 
Robison, 55, 59 
Roebuck, Dr., 57 
Romance languages, 138 
Romanism, Morse on, 89 
Romish, Church, 142 ; ecclesiastical 

corporations, 85, 123, 142, 346 
Roscoe, 205 
Rush, Dr., 346 
Russia, II ; communities in, 314, 

365 

S 

Sanitary science, loi 

St. Louis, 335 

Sciences in University of Va. , 157 
et seq. 1/ 

Scientific discovery, 156 

Scott, Walter, 66 

Scotland, inventions and schools in, 
64 

Schools, in South America, 8 ; in 
Poland, II ; in Va., 33, 35, 120, 
123, 124 ; in Holland and Scotland, 
54; in N. v., 121 ; land grants 
for, 165 ; in Kansas, 327 ; in China, 
339 ; in Indiana, 354 ; Western 
territory, 246 ^ 

Self-government, I, 23, 379 ; in Great 
Britain, 314 

Seward, 113, 115, 121; on education 
in N. Y. , 249 

Sherman, Roger, 47 

Silliman, 71, 98 

Simson, 55 

Slavery, in South America, 7, 220 ; 
in U. S., 213, 273 ; in Western ter- 
ritory, 246, 247 ; in 111., 266 

Slave trade, 216 ; encouraged by Eng- 
lish sovereigns, 221 

Small, Prof, 57 

Smith, Adam, 345 ; J. O. F., 77 

South America, independence in, 5, 
7, 9, 12 ; debasing education in, 6, 

14 

South Carolina, slave law, 295, 300 ; 
illiteracy in, 303, 305 ; colored pop- 
ulation in, 362 

Spaight, 244 

Spain, 5, 23, 28, 29 ; slave treaty 
with England, 221 



Spanish constitution and education, 
30, 31 ; language, 138, 202 

Sparks, Jared, 267 

Spencer, J. C, 81 

Stanislas Augustus, 29 

Statesmen, 103, 137, 162 

Steam-engine, 57 ; legal dispute about, 
59, 64 

Stephens, A. H., 2S4 

Stephensons, 67 

Supreme Court, 378 

Sylvester, Pope, 150 

Symmes, J. C., 248 



T 



" Tableaux de la Nature," 3 

Tappan, H. A., 74 

Tax for benefit of schools, 114, 128, 

210, 308 
Taxation, 85, 165 
Technical instruction, 194 
Telegraph, see Morse ; operators, 96 ; 

P. O., 74, '85 
Telescope, 102 
The Sun Dial, 84 
Thucydides, 45 
Torunda, de, 28 
Tourgee, 305 

Treaty of 1782, of 1803, 30 
Trees and plants, useful, 196 
Truancy laws, 350 
Tucker, 271 
Turgot, 30 
Tyler, Gov., 319 
Tyndale, 141, 142, 145 



U 



U. S. Constitution framed by cul- 
tured men, 45 ; Congress and tele- 
graph, 80 

University, advantages of, 50 ; im- 
portance of, 53 ; indirect influence 
of, 68, 69 ; influence on science of 
navigation, 102 ; influence on 
schools, 105 

University, of N. C, 103 ; Pavia, 
102 ; Oxford, 139 ; Penn., 46 ; Va. , 
39, 43, 151, 189, 207 : to admit 
colored people, 241 ; Washington, 
proposed, 44, 167 ; Western, pro- 
posed, 248 



INDEX. 



387 



Vail, 76, 82 

Victoria, Queen, 333 

Virginia, 126 ; Assembly, 31, 38, 117, 

215 ; code, 113, 186 ; slave law, 

297, 300 ; illiteracy in, 303, 304 ; 

schools, 120-128 
Volta, 78 
Voting, reading a qualification for, 

344, 362 

W 

Walker, 75 
Wardon, 26 
Warville, 224 
Washburne, E. B., 279 
Washington, 16, 17, 35, 48, 167, 171 
Watt, James, 53, 59 ; inventions, 61 ; 

Jeffrey on, 62 ; statue, 65 ; Scott 

on, 66 



Welch, 143 

Wesley, 276 

West Indies, 4, 276, 288, 377 

West Point, 354 

West Virginia, illiteracy, 306 

Wheatstone, 95 

Whitney, Eli, 96 

Wickliff, 104, 139 

William and Mary, College of, 252, 

253 
Williams, S. Wells, 339 
Williamson, 244 
Wirt, 226 
Wolsey, 141 

Women, at universities, 150 
Worden, 3 



Yale College, 69, 70, 95, 98 



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